Section 179 Deduction for Commercial EV Charger Installation

Section 30C is a tax credit: a dollar-for-dollar reduction in tax owed, worth up to 30% of the cost of qualified alternative fuel vehicle refueling property, capped at $100,000 per item, and available only in an eligible census tract. It terminated for property placed in service after June 30, 2026 under 26 U.S.C. §30C(i), as amended by §70504 of Public Law 119-21 (the One Big Beautiful Bill Act). A commercial charging project commissioned in July 2026 or later gets nothing from it, regardless of when the project started.Section 179 and bonus depreciation are not credits. They are cost-recovery rules: they change when you get to deduct the cost of business equipment you already own, not whether you owe less tax on a dollar-for-dollar basis. They have no census-tract test, because they were never built around one — they apply to depreciable business property generally, from a delivery van to a server rack to a charging pedestal. Neither section terminated in 2026. Confusing the two is the exact error this page exists to correct: a proposal that drops the 30C line because it terminated, and drops Section 179 or bonus depreciation along with it, is throwing away a deduction that is still there.

Section 179 lets a business elect to deduct the full cost of qualifying equipment in the year it is placed in service, instead of depreciating it over several years. For a tax year beginning in 2026, the maximum amount a taxpayer may expense under §179(b)(1) is $2,560,000, and that limit is reduced dollar-for-dollar once total qualifying purchases for the year exceed $4,090,000 under §179(b)(2) — both figures set by Rev. Proc. 2025-32, which itself implements the OBBBA's increase to §179 and the inflation adjustment for tax years beginning after December 31, 2025.A charging pedestal, the associated switchgear and conduit run, and other depreciable EV charging equipment purchased for business use are ordinary candidates for a §179 election, the same as any other piece of business equipment — there is no charger-specific carve-out and no charger-specific exclusion. The election is made on Form 4562 and is subject to §179's general limits: it cannot exceed the business's taxable income for the year, and it does not apply to property used 50% or less for business.

Bonus depreciation is a separate, and in 2026 more powerful, lever. The OBBBA's §70301 amended §168(k) to permanently restore a 100% additional first-year depreciation deduction for qualifying property acquired after January 19, 2025, removing the placed-in-service deadline and the phase-down schedule that would otherwise have dropped the rate toward zero by 2027. Treasury and the IRS issued interim guidance on this in Notice 2026-11.Unlike §179, bonus depreciation has no dollar cap and no business-income limitation — it can create or add to a loss. It applies to property with a MACRS recovery period of 20 years or less, which covers ordinary business equipment including charging infrastructure. In practice a property owner installing chargers now has two available levers for the same equipment cost, and which one — or which combination — makes sense depends on the business's income position for the year, a call for the tax preparer.

Depreciable business property is assigned a MACRS recovery period, and the honest answer for EV charging equipment is that its classification is not uniformly settled in public guidance. 26 U.S.C. §168(e)(3)(C)(v) sets the catch-all rule for 7-year property: property that "(I) does not have a class life, and (II) is not otherwise classified" under the statute's other categories falls into the 7-year class by default.Whether your specific charging equipment lands there, in a different class under an asset-class table, or is treated some other way by your preparer is a real question with a real answer for your return — it is just not one this page can give you without inventing precision we do not have. What does not depend on that classification: both §179 expensing and 100% bonus depreciation are available for MACRS property with a recovery period of 20 years or less, and every plausible classification for a charger falls well inside that ceiling. Ask your preparer which recovery period they are using and why, and get it in writing before you rely on a vendor's tax slide.

A pro forma dated after June 2026 that carries a thirty percent federal credit line for a commercial charger install is describing law that no longer exists, and the fix is not to delete the row — it is to replace it with the right one.

Not tax advice, and not a substitute for a preparer who has seen your return.