Key takeaways

• The 25C credit is gone, not the market: the federal tax credit that covered up to $2,000 for a heat pump expired at the end of 2025, but financing, utility rebates, and geothermal incentives are still very much alive.
• Your old CTAs are now false advertising: any page, ad, or postcard still pointing homeowners to “claim your tax credit” needs to be rewritten this month, not next quarter.
• The contractors who reframe fastest win the search results: Google is already surfacing fresh 2026 content on this topic, and stale pages get buried under it.

The federal Section 25C tax credit that used to hand homeowners up to $2,000 back for a new heat pump expired at the end of 2025, and a lot of HVAC contractors are quietly panicking about it. That credit sat at the center of plenty of sales pitches for years. Without it, some homeowners are pumping the brakes on upgrades they’d already been talked into, and contractors who leaned on “claim your tax credit” messaging are watching that angle go stale overnight. If your marketing still points people toward an incentive that doesn’t exist anymore, you’re missing more than a sale. You’re handing your competitor the chance to look like the only one who actually knows what’s going on in 2026.

Still Writers has spent over a decade building marketing and content for HVAC contractors across the US and Canada, and we’ve watched incentive programs come and go more than once. We’re SEO people, but we didn’t pick HVAC at random either. A chunk of our team came up through actual construction and trade work before switching to marketing, so we’re not guessing at what a service call feels like. We’ve taken client sites from a trickle of weekly visitors to hundreds of qualified visits within months, and incentive shifts like this one are exactly the kind of moment where that experience pays off. Plenty of other agencies can write you a blog post about this too, but few of them will tell you which lines on your own site are actively costing you leads right now.

This article walks through what changed, what’s still available to lean on, and how to rework your messaging so it still converts. You’ll learn:

• What actually expired versus what’s still active in 2026
• How to reframe your pitch around financing, efficiency, and utility rebates instead
• Specific language and page updates to make this week

What actually expired, and what didn’t

The confusion is understandable. Incentive programs stack on top of each other, and most homeowners never fully understood the difference between a credit, a rebate, and a point-of-sale discount in the first place. Here’s the short version. The Section 25C Energy Efficient Home Improvement Credit, which covered 30% of equipment and installation costs up to $2,000 for a heat pump, expired for any system installed after December 31, 2025. Homeowners who installed before that date can still claim it on this year’s return, but that window is closing fast.

What didn’t expire is where your new pitch lives. The HEEHRA program still offers point-of-sale rebates up to $8,000 for income-qualified households, administered state by state. Section 25D, the credit for geothermal systems, remains active through 2032 at 30% of cost with no cap. On top of both, individual utility companies keep running their own rebate programs, often worth $200 to $1,500 per unit, completely separate from anything the federal government touches.

That’s a real, defensible list of incentives you can still put in front of a homeowner. The problem is that most contractor websites still talk about the credit that’s gone and stay silent on the three that are still standing. If you want the fuller picture on what these programs mean for homeowners in your specific state, that’s worth a separate conversation with your content team about localizing this messaging.

Why this matters more than it looks like it does

A homeowner who searches “heat pump tax credit 2026” and lands on your page expecting to read about $2,000 back, only to find out mid-call that it expired, doesn’t just feel misled. They feel like your company is behind the curve. That’s a trust hit you don’t recover from in a single phone conversation, and it’s the exact opening a sharper competitor down the street needs to win the bid. We covered a related version of this problem in why your HVAC website gets clicks but not calls, and outdated incentive messaging is one of the fastest ways to turn a click into a wasted one.

There’s an upside buried in here too. Search interest around this exact question is spiking right now, and most of the content ranking for it is generic homeowner advice, not anything written from a contractor’s side. That’s a real gap. If you’re one of the first local companies to publish a clear, honest “here’s what changed and here’s what’s still on the table” page, you pick up search traffic your competitors are still ignoring. That kind of gap is exactly what we look for when we plan a client’s content calendar, alongside the broader patterns covered in best HVAC lead generation tactics that work year round.

This isn’t a one-season problem

Heating season traffic tends to keep this topic alive well past November. Homeowners planning a spring replacement will still be researching incentives in January and February, so a page you publish now keeps working for months. That overlaps with a broader shoulder-season pattern we cover in why HVAC lead generation dries up in the off-season. If you’re curious how AI search tools are changing the way homeowners find this kind of information, HVAC lead generation: AI search vs. traditional SEO walks through what’s shifting and what still works the old way.

How to reframe your pitch around what’s still available

The fix isn’t complicated, but it does take deliberate rewriting rather than a quick find-and-replace. Swap “claim your tax credit” language for a broader financial framing that still leads with savings, just savings that actually exist. A few ways to do that well:

• Lead with financing, not incentives: a 0% or low-interest financing offer converts a hesitant homeowner faster than a rebate they’d need to research on their own. We dig into this comparison directly in financing offers vs. cash discounts.
• Put the HEEHRA and utility rebate math on the page: most homeowners have no idea their utility offers anything. Naming the actual dollar figure for your service area does more work than a vague “rebates may apply” line.
• Talk about efficiency savings in monthly terms: “cut your winter heating bill by roughly a third” lands better than an abstract tax credit that already expired. Pairing that with a maintenance agreement offer gives the homeowner a second reason to commit now.
• Give geothermal its own small section if you install it: the 25D credit is the strongest incentive left standing, and almost nobody is marketing it well.

None of this replaces the fundamentals. Your site still needs to load fast, answer the phone, and make it obvious how to book a call, the same issues we cover in why your HVAC emergency dispatch page isn’t converting this winter. Incentive messaging is one piece of a bigger conversion picture.

This is also the moment to check every page on your site for the phrase “tax credit” and update or remove anything that’s now inaccurate. That includes old blog posts, service pages, and any paid ad copy still running. It’s a small project, but leaving it undone is worse than not mentioning incentives at all.

Specific page updates to make this week

Start with your highest-traffic pages first. Your homepage, your heat pump installation service page, and any landing page tied to paid ads are the priority. For each one:

• Remove or rewrite any sentence that references the expired federal credit as currently available.
• Add a short, current section covering HEEHRA, utility rebates, and financing, with real numbers where you have them.
• Update your call-to-action language so it doesn’t promise a specific dollar figure you can no longer deliver.
• If you run Google Business Profile posts, this is a good week to publish one addressing the change directly. We cover format ideas for that in 5 GBP post ideas that actually get HVAC companies winter calls.

If your budget and time allow, a dedicated blog post explaining the change in plain language, similar to this one, gives you a page to link paid traffic to and a resource your sales team can text homeowners mid-conversation. It also gives you fresh, timely content Google tends to reward over an evergreen page that hasn’t been touched in a year. If you’re not sure what that kind of ongoing content work should cost, the HVAC lead generation budget guide for 2026 breaks down realistic ranges.

Where financing fits into all of this

With the biggest federal incentive gone, financing becomes the centerpiece of your pitch rather than a fallback option. Homeowners who were counting on that $2,000 to offset the cost of a new system still need a way to make the math work. A clear financing offer, paired honestly with whatever rebates they do qualify for, replaces the gap the tax credit left behind almost dollar for dollar in a lot of cases. We go deeper on how to market financing specifically, now that the incentive landscape has shrunk, in how should HVAC contractors market financing now that rebates are shrinking.

The contractors who get ahead of this shift now, rather than waiting for confused customers to bring it up first, are the ones who’ll own this conversation heading into the busiest heating months of the year.

How to know if your team already fixed this

If you’re not sure your own marketing is still leaning on the expired credit, run a quick audit. Search your own site for “tax credit,” “$2,000,” and “25C.” Check your last three months of Google Business Profile posts. Pull up any paid search ads still running and read the actual ad copy, beyond the landing page. It’s common for the landing page to get updated while the ad itself, written months earlier, keeps running unchanged. That mismatch alone can tank your quality score and your conversion rate at the same time.

Once you’ve confirmed what’s outdated, prioritize fixes by traffic volume. A stale line on a page nobody visits can wait. A stale line on your homepage or your top paid landing page cannot. This kind of cleanup is also a natural moment to revisit your broader spend, especially if you’re already thinking ahead to what your HVAC marketing budget should look like heading into 2027.

If your crews are heading into a quieter stretch anyway, this is a good week to knock this out rather than let it slide. We cover how contractors typically use that downtime in how do HVAC contractors keep crews busy through the slow season, and a marketing audit is exactly the kind of task that fits into a quieter week without pulling anyone off a job site.

What HVAC contractors should do now: your next step

You came here wondering if the tax credit conversation was over. It’s not, it just changed shape. Here’s a quick recap of what you learned:

• The federal 25C credit expired for installs after December 31, 2025, but HEEHRA, utility rebates, and the 25D geothermal credit are all still active.
• Outdated “claim your tax credit” messaging costs you trust and leads, beyond simple accuracy.
• Financing now carries more weight in your pitch than it did a year ago.
• A quick site-wide audit of your pages, ads, and GBP posts catches most of the damage in an afternoon.
• Being early to publish honest, current content on this topic is a real search opportunity right now.

Still Writers works with HVAC companies across the US and Canada, and we watch incentive shifts like this one hit dozens of client sites at once. That gives us a clearer read on what actually needs to change, and what’s just noise, than a single in-house marketing hire chasing headlines alone could get to on their own. If a straight, no-pressure conversation about cleaning up your own site’s messaging sounds useful, click through and talk to a marketing expert today.

Frequently asked questions about marketing after the tax credit expires

Did homeowners who installed in 2025 still get the tax credit?

Yes. Anyone who installed a qualifying system before December 31, 2025 can still claim the 25C credit on that year’s tax return. The expiration only applies to systems installed starting in 2026.

Is there any federal incentive left for heat pumps at all?

Air-source heat pumps lost their federal credit, but geothermal heat pumps still qualify for the Section 25D credit at 30% of cost through 2032, and HEEHRA point-of-sale rebates remain active for income-qualified households.

Should I stop mentioning incentives in my marketing entirely?

No. Removing incentive language entirely leaves money on the table for both you and the homeowner. The fix is replacing outdated federal credit claims with accurate financing, utility rebate, and HEEHRA information.

How fast should I update my website and ads?

Treat it like a this-week project, not a someday project. Outdated incentive claims on live ads and high-traffic pages actively cost you conversions and trust every day they stay up.

Will this affect my Google rankings?

Search interest around this exact topic is climbing, and fresh, accurate 2026 content tends to outrank older pages that haven’t been updated. Publishing a clear explainer page can be a genuine ranking opportunity beyond simple cleanup.

What should you read next?

• How should HVAC contractors market financing now that rebates are shrinking?: go deeper on replacing the tax credit pitch with a financing-first message.
• Do HVAC companies still need to advertise heat pumps after the tax credit ends?: see if the category itself is still worth pushing hard.
• 5 Google Business Profile post ideas that actually get HVAC companies winter calls: turn this update into a quick, current GBP post.

If you’re not ready to talk to us yet, these resources will help you learn more first.

StillWriters