The 30% Solar Credit Died. The Other 30% of Your Quote Is Paperwork.

If you priced solar last year, flinched when the 30% federal credit expired on December 31, and put the folder in a drawer, there’s a second 30% sitting in that quote.

That one is paperwork.

The average US home solar project runs about $31,000. Roughly 30% of it is what the industry calls soft costs: permit fees, inspection scheduling, forms, and the hours an installer burns working through each town’s own process instead of putting hardware on a roof. That figure comes from Heaven Campbell, Florida program director at the nonprofit Solar United Neighbors. On a $31,000 system, call it $9,000. Australia and Germany put up the same panels for a fraction of the US price largely because their permitting is simpler.

The federal credit used to paper over that overhead. With the credit gone, the overhead is what’s left to attack.

What Florida did

Nationally, the residential solar market is on pace to shrink 21% this year, according to Wood Mackenzie and the Solar Energy Industries Association. Florida went the other direction. BloombergNEF projects the state reaches 710 megawatts of home solar in 2026, up 62% from 439 megawatts in 2025. In the year’s first 13 weeks, Florida led the country in approved solar permits with more than 450 megawatts’ worth, roughly four times the same stretch in either of the two prior years.

The sunshine didn’t change. There’s no state tax credit filling the federal hole.

What changed is a permitting law. HB 683, signed June 13, 2025 and effective that July, gives local governments five business days to review and approve a single-trade permit like rooftop solar. Miss the deadline and the permit is deemed approved as a matter of law, and has to be issued the next business day. The law also lets licensed private providers do the plan review and inspections, allows those inspections to happen virtually, and bars building departments from demanding a copy of your contract before they’ll issue a permit.

It passed both chambers unanimously, folded into a construction package covering every trade rather than a solar-only bill. Some Florida jurisdictions had been taking 30 days.

Ask what the filing cabinet costs

Ask your installer how many days permitting actually takes in your specific city or county, and get the answer in writing. A five-day process and a two-month process are two different prices for the identical system, and that difference reaches your quote whether anyone itemizes it or not.

Then confirm whether your state still has net metering and at what compensation rate. With the federal credit gone, that credit now carries far more of your payback math than it did when Washington was covering 30%. Run both against your real power bill in our solar calculator before you sign.

Florida isn’t having a boom, and its own installers won’t claim one. Some of those first-quarter systems were 2025 orders finishing late, and Florida’s permit approvals already slowed in the second quarter while California’s surged past them.

What Florida proves is narrower and more useful than a boom. A serious piece of your solar price is your county’s filing cabinet, and unlike federal tax law, that part somebody can still do something about.

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