NJ Window Rebates & Tax Credits 2026

Short version. The federal Section 25C credit was repealed for any property placed in service after December 31, 2025, so a window installed in 2026 earns nothing at tax time. Section 25D is also gone and never covered windows anyway. The New Jersey utility programs — PSE&G, JCP&L, Atlantic City Electric, Rockland Electric — are real and worth using, but they pay for air sealing, insulation, ducts, HVAC and water heating. Replacement windows are not on their eligible-measure lists.

That is not what most contractor sites say. It is not what this page said until we checked every claim on it against the statute, the IRS, and the utilities' own program pages. Where we had it wrong — a 400% Comfort Partners income limit, utility and state programs described as paying for windows, a homeowner historic tax credit — we have left the entry up and corrected it in place instead of quietly deleting it, because those are the exact things people search for.

If your windows were installed in 2025, you may still have a live federal credit to claim on your 2025 return. That is covered below too.

• Is there a federal tax credit for replacement windows in 2026?

  No. Section 25C was repealed by the One Big Beautiful Bill Act (Pub. L. 119-21, signed July 4, 2025). The statute now reads that the credit does not apply to any property placed in service after December 31, 2025, and the 2025 Form 5695 instructions say the same. Section 25D is also terminated and never covered windows in the first place. There is no federal tax credit for windows installed in 2026. If a contractor quotes you a 30% federal credit this year, they are quoting repealed law.

• My windows were paid for in 2025 but installed in 2026. Do I still get the credit?

  No. The test for Section 25C is when the property was placed in service — installation complete — not when you signed, ordered, or paid. A January 2026 installation is worth nothing federally even if the deposit cleared in 2025. If the install finished in 2025, the credit is claimed on the 2025 Form 5695, Part II, with the 2025 return — subject to the conditions that always applied: ENERGY STAR Most Efficient product, at a principal residence you owned, product cost only and not labor, capped at $600 for windows. Property placed in service in 2025 also requires the manufacturer's Qualified Manufacturer ID number on the return. If you already filed and left it off, the IRS generally allows an amended return within three years of filing or two years of paying the tax, whichever is later. Your tax preparer should handle that. We install windows; we do not give tax advice.

• Does any New Jersey utility rebate pay for replacement windows?

  No — not one of the ones we checked. We went through PSE&G, JCP&L, Atlantic City Electric and Rockland Electric, the four electric utilities that run New Jersey's residential efficiency programs, plus the state's own program list. Not one pays a rebate for replacement windows. Those programs pay for air sealing, insulation, ducts, HVAC, water heating, appliances and lighting. Windows show up in them in exactly two ways: as something the auditor notes (air leakage around your existing windows and doors) and as weather stripping of existing windows in income-qualified weatherization. This page used to publish an ENERGY STAR qualifying threshold for windows under PSE&G's program, as though hitting it earned you a rebate. It does not, and PSE&G publishes no window threshold, because PSE&G does not rebate windows.

• What is the income limit for NJ Comfort Partners?

  250% of the federal poverty guidelines. The state, PSE&G and JCP&L all publish that figure, and the BPU's 2026 income guidelines put a household of four at $82,500 a year. The table changes annually, so check the current sheet. This page previously published 400% and attached the program to JCP&L. Comfort Partners is a statewide BPU program delivered through participating electric and gas utilities, not a JCP&L or PSE&G program, and it does not replace windows. Households over the income line can still qualify categorically — the state names TANF, Section 8, SNAP, SSI and General Assistance.

• Then why replace windows at all, if nothing pays for it?

  Because the case for windows never rested on the credit. EPA's ENERGY STAR program puts the physics plainly: windows are about 8% of a home's exterior surface but account for about 45% of heat gain or loss. What EPA publishes for the payoff is a range, not a single number — replacing poor-performing windows with ENERGY STAR certified models saves between $200 and $600 annually on average, depending on where you live. ENERGY STAR also estimates that the value a window replacement project retains at resale is approximately 65 to 75% of the project cost. Then there is everything that never shows up on a bill: no cold draft off the glass, no condensation, no sash you cannot open. What changed in 2026 is the subsidy, not the performance.

• What U-factor should I actually be buying in New Jersey?

  Current ENERGY STAR criteria are version 7.0, effective October 2023. Our own pages published the retired version 6.0 numbers until this round; they have been corrected. New Jersey is split between two ENERGY STAR zones. Bergen, Passaic, Morris, Sussex, Warren, Hunterdon and Somerset are Northern; the rest of the state is North-Central. Garfield and the rest of Bergen County are Northern. For the Northern zone the base criteria are a U-factor of 0.22 or lower with an SHGC of 0.17 or higher — SHGC is a minimum there, because you want winter solar gain. There is also an equivalent-performance path: ENERGY STAR certifies Northern-zone windows rated at U-factor 0.23 or 0.24 when SHGC is 0.35 or higher, and at U-factor 0.25 or 0.26 when SHGC is 0.40 or higher. So a window at 0.25 can be genuinely certified for the Northern zone if its solar gain is high enough — do not reject one on the U-factor alone. For the North-Central zone it is a U-factor of 0.25 or lower with an SHGC of 0.40 or lower, and the equivalent-performance path does not apply outside the Northern zone. These are EPA's ENERGY STAR climate zones, which are not the same as the IECC code climate zones — the two are easy to mix up. New Jersey's energy subcode separately sets a maximum U-factor that replacement windows have to meet by law, and ENERGY STAR certification is a tighter standard than that legal floor. One more thing: ENERGY STAR Most Efficient used to be the tier that unlocked the federal credit. With 25C repealed it gates no money at all. It is now just a higher performance tier. Read the NFRC label on the actual unit, not the brochure.

• Can any incentives be stacked on a window project?

  Not for windows. There is no federal leg and no utility leg to stack. If your project is bigger than windows, that is a different conversation: the utility whole-home program can pay real money for air sealing, insulation, ducts and HVAC, and PSE&G's version carries interest-free on-bill repayment. The sequence matters — the home energy assessment has to happen before the work, not after. If you are planning envelope work alongside new windows, book the assessment first and let it tell you where the money actually goes.