Tax Breaks for Private School Scholarships--Who Benefits?

Sep 25, 2018, 1:23 PM

(from EdWeek) A new Government Accountability Office report analyzes what kind of students and donors benefit from state-level tax breaks for private school scholarships. The report analyzed 22 programs in 18 states that awarded $856 million during the 2016-17 school year. In a typical tax-credit scholarship program, a state uses generous tax breaks to incentivize businesses or individuals to donate to groups that provide scholarships to students to attend private schools. In some cases, donors can reduce the amount they pay in taxes below what they donated to the scholarship program in the first place, by claiming deductions at both the state and federal levels.

Among the report's findings:

Most tax-credit scholarship programs base scholarship amounts on household income;
Seventeen programs have income limits for participating families;
Those limits range from $32,000-$136,500 per year for a 4-person household;
Income limits exceeded their state's median income in six of the 17 programs;
Other eligibility requirements include disability status and whether students are zoned to a poorly-performing public school;
Donors receive a dollar-for-dollar tax credit on the donations they make in half of the programs.