Idaho moved past Governor Brad Little's February executive order by enacting HB 731, putting the state's participation in the federal Scholarship Tax Credit into permanent statute so it cannot lapse when an order expires. The near-unanimous, bipartisan bill takes effect July 1, 2026.
Idaho has done something no other state had done at the time of writing: it opted into the federal Scholarship Tax Credit (FSTC / ECCA / §25F) by executive order, then turned around and locked that choice into permanent statute. House Bill 731, titled “EDUCATION - Adds to existing law to provide for the State of Idaho to elect to participate in the federal tax credit scholarship program,” was signed by Governor Brad Little on March 19, 2026 as Session Law Chapter 72, and its effective date is July 1, 2026. The statute makes Idaho's participation a fixture of state law rather than a policy that survives only as long as a governor's signature on an executive order, and it lands just as the program prepares for its January 1, 2027 launch and its $1,700 donor credit cap.
The vote totals are the headline. The Idaho House passed HB 731 on February 24, 2026 by a margin of 68-0-2, and the Senate followed on March 12, 2026 by 30-5-0. Outside of the handful of senators recorded against it, the bill drew essentially no organized opposition, a striking contrast to the bitter, party-line fights and veto showdowns that have defined §25F adoption in other states. The codification was deliberate: HB 731 was written to make participation permanent precisely because an executive order can expire, while a statute remains on the books until the legislature repeals it. For a program that depends on a state's standing election to the U.S. Treasury, that durability matters to the donors and Scholarship Granting Organizations deciding whether Idaho is a stable place to build.
HB 731 did not start the clock; it secured it. Idaho's path began earlier in the year when Governor Little issued Executive Order 2026-03 on February 16, 2026, opting the state into the federal scholarship tax credit program created under the One Big Beautiful Bill Act and directing the Idaho State Department of Education to implement it. The legislature then converted that executive action into law over the following month. The statute itself addresses how Idaho carries out its election, including the state's coordination with the U.S. Treasury and the handling of qualified scholarship organizations operating in Idaho, though the precise operational mechanics will be settled as the State Department of Education stands up the program ahead of the 2027 launch. The earlier IRS Form 15714 advance-election process gave states a way to signal participation before the rules were final; Idaho has now gone considerably further than a preliminary signal.
What Idaho documents is a fourth distinct route into §25F. Virginia and Florida came in by governor's pen alone. Kentucky, Kansas, and North Carolina arrived through legislative veto overrides, forcing the program in over a hostile governor's objection. Idaho inverts that sequence entirely: a Republican governor opted in by executive order, and then a near-unanimous, bipartisan legislature codified the choice into permanent statute, removing any future dependence on the executive's continued cooperation. The timing is also notable, because the July 1 effective date arrives just as Treasury's previewed proposed §25F regulations, expected by the end of September 2026, begin to set the national implementation calendar. We track Idaho's standing and every other state's on the Idaho state page and the participation map; founders weighing where to organize can review our directory of scholarship-granting organizations and the primer on how §25F works.
