Column: EV tax credit transfers are here — if dealers can get past the technical glitches

WASHINGTON — While most U.S. car dealers have been skeptical of the Biden administration's electric vehicle policies, some at least have looked forward to a new program that allows their customers to get an upfront discount on eligible new and used EVs.

As of Jan. 1, dealers must be registered on a newly launched website — called IRS Energy Credits Online — for their customers to claim or transfer federal tax credits and use those funds toward the purchase of an eligible EV. Registration, which opened Nov. 1, also is required for dealers to be reimbursed for transferred credits.

The catch? The process has to work.

While some dealers have registered and used the online portal without issue, others haven't been as lucky, citing problems with the sign-up process that prevented them from being able to apply credits at the time of sale.

"It's like we're dead in the water," Andrew Tang, operations manager at MY Cars Auto Group in Salinas, Calif., told me earlier this month when he was experiencing issues with the portal.

A U.S. Treasury Department official said the IRS is aware of the issues some dealers are facing and that it is working to quickly resolve them.

The official also pointed to the program's progress: About $135 million in advance payments to dealers were issued from Jan. 1 through Feb. 6.

My colleague Lindsay VanHulle and I will share more dealer experiences — both successes and frustrations — with the EV tax credit portal on Monday.

In the meantime, Tara Thomas, a partner in the dealerships group at national accounting and advisory firm Forvis, said she's heard it both ways from her clients: uneventful registrations and some portal fumbles.

"With everybody trying to do this at one time," she said, "there's definitely going to be some transition to getting this into a well-oiled machine."