Goodman says that he did a broadcast to the 20,000 e-mail addresses in the company’s database the weekend after the legislation passed and sold between $30,000 and $40,000 to existing customers or customers who didn’t buy from Windowizards the first time around.
Windowizards altered its Web site’s home page to include tax credit information. The company also launched radio and print ads emphasizing not only the federal program but a Pennsylvania state tax rebate available to eligible contractors through a program called Keystone Help, which offers rebates of $250 to $500 on energy-saving improvements that meet or exceed Energy Star standards.”I’m very specifically saying that this is a tax credit, not a tax deduction,” Goodman says. “A lot of people don’t understand the difference.”
What Does, What Doesn’t
The difference is that a tax deduction reduces the amount of income on which you owe taxes, while a tax credit reduces what you owe the government in taxes. And whether or not windows will entitle homeowners to their tax credits will depend on whether or not they meet the “30/30” criteria.
Virtually all triple-pane replacement windows with gas insulation — that is, upper-end vinyl products — would make homeowners eligible for tax credits under the new legislation. On the other side of the product spectrum, single-pane windows, and those without any type of low-E coating or gas insulation, are unlikely to qualify. Home improvement company owners say that it’s in the double-pane window where ambiguity enters. Installing retailers want to be sure that their customers really are eligible for tax credits, rather than risk a rash of enraged phone calls come April 15, 2010, if homeowners find out that they weren’t eligible after all.
At WeatherTite Windows, in Girard, Ohio, owner Merv Hollander noted that two manufacturers the company buys from were attending a company sales meeting that week to explain it all to sales reps “so that everybody will be up to snuff.”
One Pennsylvania manufacturer predicted that the tax credits could boost replacement window sales by “20, 30, or 40%” in 2009. A Michigan window maker says his best guess is that the tax credits will lift industry sales by “10% and possibly as much as 20%” this year. Both claimed an uptick in orders from window replacement companies since the legislation passed. But Walker of AAMA, less sanguine by far, says, “If the performance values in the stimulus package remain as is, there will be very little, if any, positive impact on window sales in 2009 and 2010. Easing credit and restoring confidence in the economy would have a much larger impact.”
Garcia of American Exteriors says that a letter certifying company compliance with “30/30” will soon be standard in the company’s leave-behind package.
