New IRA Domestic Content Guidance: First Updated Elective Safe Harbor and Revised Guidance

Last week, Treasury and the IRS released Notice-2025-08 modifying Notice 2024-41 and Notice 2023-38 . Notice 2025-08 provides material updates and clarifications to the New Elective Safe Harbor (introduced in Notice 2024-41, and covered by our prior Client Alert found here.)

The New Elective Safe Harbor in Notice 2024-41 issued last year was a welcome addition and simplification for stakeholders seeking a more accessible approach to satisfying the Domestic Content requirements. As stakeholders began to apply the New Elective Safe Harbor in a real-world setting, however, ambiguities emerged. It became clear that the New Elective Safe Harbor tables did not fully reflect the scope of configurations, design and application of potential technologies to projects otherwise eligible for the Domestic Content bonus. To address these concerns and add further detail, yesterday’s Notice 2025-08 modifies the prior Notices in five major ways by (1) expanding and modifying the Solar PV Table, (2) modifying the Land-Based Wind Table, (3) modifying the BESS Table, (4) clarifying potential use by a taxpayer of the First Updated Elective Safe Harbor where a project meets the 80/20 Rule; and (5) providing definitions for types of Applicable Projects, Applicable Project Components and Manufactured Project Components.

In this update, we focus on the changes to the key tables and new definitions provided in Notice 2025-08.

Updated Solar PV Tables.

Notice 2025-08 modified “Table 1” from Notice 2024-41 for Solar PV projects by (1) dividing the table into two distinct sets, the “Updated Table for Solar PV Ground-Mount” and the “Updated Table for Solar PV Rooftop”, (2) revising the Assigned Cost Percentages in each table, (3) adding new columns to each Solar PV table primarily to address PV modules that incorporate c-Si PV cells and wafers manufactured within the United States (as explained in the Notice, primarily because of the material cost associated with such cells and wafers), (4) renaming certain components for clarity (e.g. “Pile and ground screw” is renamed “Steel pile or steel ground screw”, and “Steel or iron rebar in foundation” is renamed to “Steel or iron reinforcing products in foundation”), and (5) redefining, recategorizing and reclassifying certain components in each Table. ?Below we’ve reproduced the two new Solar PV tables (without footnotes). Stakeholders should consider (and compare to the prior tables) the updated values when calculating whether a project can satisfy the Domestic Content requirements through this First Updated Elective Safe Harbor and revised guidance.

Read the full article here.

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