The federal window for filing 2025 taxes closes on April 15, 2026, and for millions of middle-income Americans, that deadline also marks the last chance to claim energy efficiency credits that could offset costs they’ve been quietly drowning in for years. When I connected with Donovan Peralta in late February through a Pittsburgh-area veterans’ support group, he had two weeks until he planned to file — and he had no idea a credit worth up to $3,200 was sitting in the tax code with his name on it.
Donovan, 51, manages a regional retail store on Pittsburgh’s North Side. He earns roughly $68,000 a year before taxes — enough to cover his bills, mostly, and enough to keep his younger sister Camila enrolled at Duquesne University. But not enough, it turned out, to fix a house that was quietly falling apart around him.
The Financial Picture He Didn’t Want to Say Out Loud
When I sat down with Donovan Peralta at a diner on East Ohio Street, he ordered coffee and held the mug with both hands for a long moment before he started talking. He’s the kind of person who leads with a joke and deflects with a smile — but the financial reality he eventually described was one he’d been managing alone for the better part of three years.
His home, a row house he bought in 2009 for $112,000, needed a new roof and a replacement HVAC system. Two separate contractors had given him estimates. The roof alone: $14,200. The HVAC: $8,400. That’s $22,600 in repairs he’d been pushing down the priority list since 2023, patching leaks with roofing tape and running space heaters in the winter.
He stopped contributing to his employer’s 401(k) in 2021, when Camila started college and the monthly $800 contribution to her tuition and housing became non-negotiable for him. “She’s the only family I’ve got who still needs something from me,” he told me. “I wasn’t going to let her drop out so I could save for a retirement I’m not even sure I’ll reach.”
That decision — understandable and human as it was — left him at 51 with no retirement cushion whatsoever. According to data from the Federal Reserve’s Survey of Household Economics, nearly 28 percent of non-retired adults have no retirement savings at all. Donovan doesn’t find that statistic comforting. He finds it alarming that he belongs to it.
Why He Assumed He Was on His Own
This is the part of Donovan’s story I found most telling. He never investigated what he might qualify for — not once — because he’d already decided the answer was nothing. He makes $68,000 a year. He owns his home. He doesn’t receive any government benefits. In his mind, that profile put him firmly outside the boundary of any meaningful assistance.
That assumption — that middle-income earners are categorically excluded from federal relief — is one I’ve encountered repeatedly while reporting on this beat. Some programs do have income thresholds that exclude higher earners. But the federal tax code also contains a significant category of credits that are not means-tested in the traditional sense. The Energy Efficient Home Improvement Credit, written into law under the Inflation Reduction Act, is one of them.
There is no income cap on this credit. A household earning $68,000 and a household earning $300,000 are equally eligible — what matters is the qualifying improvement, not the taxpayer’s income bracket.
What the Credit Actually Covers — and What Donovan Found
According to IRS guidance on the Energy Efficient Home Improvement Credit, homeowners can claim 30 percent of qualifying costs, up to an annual cap that varies by improvement type. For a heat pump or central air conditioning unit, the cap is $2,000. For insulation, exterior windows, or energy audits, separate sub-limits apply — up to $1,200 more per year.
Donovan’s $8,400 HVAC estimate included the installation of a heat pump system. If that work was completed and the unit met the efficiency thresholds set by the IRS — which most modern systems sold by licensed contractors do — he would be eligible to claim 30 percent of qualifying costs, up to $2,000 for that specific improvement. Combined with insulation work a contractor had recommended alongside the HVAC installation, his potential credit climbed closer to the $3,200 annual maximum.
The credit is nonrefundable — that distinction matters. It can reduce Donovan’s federal tax liability to zero, but it cannot generate a refund beyond what he already paid in. Based on his income and withholding history, he estimated he owed roughly $4,100 in federal taxes for 2025. A $3,200 credit would reduce that liability to approximately $900.
That’s not $3,200 in his pocket. But for a man who was previously planning to write a check for the full $4,100 while carrying $22,600 in deferred home repairs and zero retirement savings, it was meaningful.
The Veterans’ Group Connection — and What He Did Next
I should explain how Donovan and I crossed paths. A coordinator at the veterans’ support group — Donovan served two years in the Army Reserve in his late twenties before transitioning to civilian retail work — reached out after he mentioned the repair situation during a meeting. He hadn’t framed it as a financial crisis. He’d mentioned it almost as a footnote, describing why he couldn’t host a group cookout at his place. The coordinator thought his situation sounded like something I’d been reporting on and made the introduction.
When I explained the credit to him during our first phone call, he was skeptical. “I’ve heard this before,” he said. “You call some number, spend three hours on hold, and they tell you your income is too high.” He wasn’t entirely wrong to be cautious — that has been the experience for many middle-income households trying to access need-based programs. But this credit doesn’t work that way.
“My accountant looked at the form and just said, ‘Yeah, this is legitimate, why didn’t you do this last year,'” Donovan told me, laughing a little. “Which was a fair question, honestly.”
A Partial Fix and an Honest Reckoning
I want to be clear about what this story is and isn’t. Donovan Peralta is not going to retire comfortably because he found a tax credit. The $3,200 in reduced tax liability helps — it’s real money in a tight budget — but it doesn’t solve the structural problem he’s been avoiding: at 51, he has nothing set aside for the years ahead, and Camila has two more years of college remaining.
Pennsylvania also has the Property Tax/Rent Rebate Program, which Donovan looked into after our conversations. His income exceeds the current eligibility threshold for that program — another case where the middle ground proves frustratingly narrow. He earns too much for need-based state programs and too little to absorb a $22,600 repair bill without financial damage.
The roof question sits unresolved. The retirement question sits even more unresolved. He knows it. When I asked him directly what he planned to do about savings, he was quiet for a moment and then said: “I’m going to figure it out when Camila graduates. Two years. I keep telling myself two years.”
Reporting on economic relief programs, I find that the people who most need help navigating the system are often the ones least positioned to advocate for themselves — not because they lack intelligence or resourcefulness, but because they’re spending that energy surviving. Donovan Peralta is competent and hardworking and still managed to leave a legitimate federal credit unclaimed for at least two prior tax years, simply because he’d written himself out of the story of who deserves to look.
The deadline is April 15, 2026. If you own a home and made qualifying energy improvements in 2025, IRS Form 5695 is where that conversation starts.
Related: He Paid $374 a Month for Health Insurance on $34,000 a Year — Then One Phone Call Changed Everything
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