Solar profit margin benchmarks
The IRS reports what one-owner businesses filing Schedule C earn, by sector. Solar falls under Specialty trade contractors. For tax year 2023, 2,521,516 returns reported $257.8 billion in receipts, $80.4 billion in cost of sales and $40.5 billion in net income less deficit (the table gives thousands of dollars):
| Benchmark | Value |
|---|---|
| Gross margin | 68.8% |
| Net margin, owner pay included | 15.7% |
| Average receipts per return | $102,220 |
| Average net income per return | $16,054 |
The owner's own draw is not an expense on a Schedule C, so that net margin is mostly the owner's wage, not profit on top of it.
Where the money goes in solar
Solar is equipment heavy: panels, inverters and racking are most of the job cost, with labor and permits on top.
Where solar margin leaks, and how to win it back
- Permitting and interconnection delays
- Roof repairs found during install
- Equipment price swings
- Inspection failures
- Customer acquisition cost
Ways solar installers raise margin: price permit and inspection time; check the roof before quoting; sell monitoring and service plans; watch equipment price changes.
Check your solar prices against the costs
The typical national prices from our sourced calculators are a check on whether your prices leave room for margin:
| Service | Typical | Range |
|---|---|---|
| EV charger, Level 2 | $1,325 | $850 to $1,800 a job |
Work out the margin on each line of your menu, not just the big jobs. The usual solar menu: residential solar system; battery storage; panel upgrade for solar; system inspection; panel cleaning; inverter replacement; ev charger, level 2; critter guard.
Overhead comes out of the margin before profit. In solar it includes general liability insurance, which Insureon's customers who are contractors as a group pay an average of $83 a month for; commercial auto at $270 a month on the same figures.
Work out your own margin
Put one recent solar job into the calculator above, or switch it to "My margin for the year" to set your year next to the IRS benchmark. A 50% markup is a 33% margin; the markup calculator shows the rest.
Sources
- IRS Statistics of Income: Nonfarm sole proprietorships, Table 2, income statements by industrial sector, tax year 2023, checked October 9, 2026
- IRS: SOI tax stats, nonfarm sole proprietorship statistics, checked October 9, 2026
- Insureon: Insurance cost for contractors as a group, checked October 9, 2026
- Fixr, cost to install an EV charger at home, checked October 8, 2026
- Bob Vila, cost to install an EV charger at home, checked October 8, 2026
- HomeAdvisor, electric car charging installation cost, checked October 8, 2026
- Fixr, electrical panel upgrade cost, checked October 8, 2026
- This Old House, cost to upgrade an electrical panel, checked October 8, 2026
- BLS Occupational Employment and Wage Statistics, May 2025 (state and national files), checked October 8, 2026
- US Census Bureau, 2020 ZIP Code Tabulation Area to county relationship file, checked October 8, 2026
Last checked October 9, 2026. This page is general information, not legal or tax advice. Rules change and differ by state and city, so confirm with the agency named before you act.