In a speech delivered on March 22, the U.S. Department of the Treasury’s Assistant Secretary for Tax Policy, Lily Batchelder, indicated that additional guidance on prevailing wage and apprenticeship requirements for Inflation Reduction Act clean energy tax credits is months away.
“In the coming months, Treasury will issue guidance on […] prevailing wage and apprenticeship standards required to receive full credits. The last piece of phase one will be additional guidance on the requirements for paying prevailing wages and employing apprentices to provide employers and workers with more clarity and direction on IRS guardrails and to ensure compliance is streamlined,” said Batchelder.
The ABC-opposed Inflation Reduction Act was signed into law on Aug. 16, 2022, and provides over $270 billion in tax credits for the construction of solar, wind, hydrogen, carbon sequestration, electric vehicle charging stations and other clean energy projects. However, to access these tax credits developers must ensure that contractors meet prevailing wage and government-registered apprenticeship requirements.
Treasury and the Internal Revenue Service issued initial guidance on these requirements on Nov. 30, 2022, and they are now in effect for projects that began on or after Jan. 30, 2023. ABC commented on this guidance and has continued to directly communicate to the agencies serious concerns regarding the lack of clarity in this guidance.
For more information and resources on compliance with the IRA’s prevailing wage and apprenticeship requirements, please visit ABC’s new website, abc.org/ira. If you have questions that are not answered on the website or in Treasury/IRS guidance, ABC is here to help. Please email [email protected] and ABC subject matter experts will work to answer your question or reach out to Treasury/IRA for clarification.