#42 | Tax Advantages of Solar Technology and IRS Scammers feat. Ali Samana & Terence Lee

Practical Tax with Steve Moskowitz

The tax advantages and the future of solar and other green technology. Plus, a Security and Fraud specialist offers insights on IRS scammers. Episode Transcript Intro: Welcome to the Practical Tax podcast, with tax attorney Steve Moskowitz. The Practical Tax podcast is brought to you by Moskowitz, LLP, a tax law firm. Disclaimer: The information contained in this podcast is based upon information available as of date of recording and will not be updated for changes in law regulation. Any information is not to be considered tax advice or legal advice and does not form an attorney/client relationship. Further, this podcast may be construed as attorney advertising. You should see professional consultation for your individual tax and legal situation. Chip Franklin: Welcome again to Practical Tax with tax attorney, Steve Moskowitz. Steve, you're looking good, my friend. Steve Moskowitz: Thanks so much, Chip. Chip Franklin: Lot to talk about today. And there's a lot going on in the world. One of those really involves us here in California. We have so many days of sunshine, maybe not in the sunset district of San Francisco. Steve Moskowitz: It's wonderful here. Chip Franklin: The ironically named sunset district, but one of the things that it always blew me away is that we don't have more solar panels on every... Well, I don't know, on every building from San Francisco down to the border with Mexico, and I find it fascinating. And that's one thing we don't have that we should, but maybe there's reasons that I don't know. So we invited our first guest today. He's a green energy expert, and he's here with us. Ali Samana joins us here on the Practical Tax podcast. Ali, thank you so much for being here. Good to have you. And it's really great to be able to talk to somebody that can maybe clear some of this up for us. Happy sunny Friday. Ali Samana: Hey, happy Friday to you too. And howdy from Texas. How are you, Chip? Chip Franklin: I'm well. I'm glad I'm not in Texas though. It's hot down there. Steve Moskowitz: Well, I don't know. Half of California is moving to Texas too. Chip Franklin: Yeah. Yeah, if you believe the ads, it seems like it. Steve Moskowitz: Every day clients are telling me. Even today, clients are well, we're moving to Texas. Chip Franklin: Have you been to Texas, Steve? Steve Moskowitz: Many times. Chip Franklin: All right. No knocking you Ali. I love California, but I guess everybody has their own. Steve Moskowitz: So do I, doesn't mean I can't like Texas too. Chip Franklin: Fair enough. Okay. So Ali, let's start with just across the country, and then we can focus in on California. What are the challenges facing the expansion of solar energy in California and across the country? Ali Samana: So there are several challenges that are facing the green energy market. So if you imagine where the cell phone technology was about 30 years ago, that's kind of where we are. We have this infrastructure, this very heavy grid infrastructure, and now we're going down to what's called distributor generation. So there's a lot of pushback, number one, from these grid operators, because if everybody just goes off, well, these poles and wires and everything that they've spent billions and billions of dollars on, nobody will really need anymore. California has a unique problem that the country is... California leads a lot, by the way, for the rest of the nation to follow. They're number one in installs year after year. So the problems that they face today, the rest of the country will face in two, five, or 10 years. One of the problems that California faces for example is called the duck curve, and what the duck curve means is you've got all of these solar installs that are producing energy throughout the day. Normally, your grid operators would see a parabolic curve. They'd see a parabola going back to geometry in high school for usage,