Governor Greg Gianforte announced on January 21, 2026 that Montana opted in to the federal §25F scholarship tax credit, letting residents claim up to $1,700 in federal credit for SGO donations starting in 2027 on top of the state's existing Student Scholarship Organization credit.
On January 21, 2026, Montana Governor Greg Gianforte (R) announced that Montana had formally opted in to the new federal Scholarship Tax Credit created under §25F, making the state one of the early movers ahead of the program's January 1, 2027 launch. According to the governor's office, the decision lets Montana residents claim a federal tax credit of up to $1,700 per taxpayer for donations to approved Scholarship Granting Organizations (SGOs). The federal credit traces to the One Big Beautiful Bill Act, which President Trump signed in July 2025 and which authorized states to elect into the program beginning with the 2027 tax year. Gianforte, who currently chairs the Republican Governors Association, framed the move as expanding education freedom for Montana families.
The mechanism here is an administrative election rather than new legislation. Ballotpedia reported on January 27, 2026 that Montana “formally opted into the program by submitting IRS Form 15714,” the advance-election filing a governor (or a governor's designated official) uses to opt a state in, and it grouped Montana with Georgia, Idaho, Mississippi, and Virginia as states that took that step in January. That detail comes from Ballotpedia's tracking rather than the governor's press release itself, but it matches the route the IRS laid out when it published Form 15714 in December 2025, the same path early movers such as Virginia, Florida, and Alaska have used. Because the election is an executive filing, no floor vote or veto fight was required, unlike the contested paths several states traveled by overriding their governors' vetoes.
What makes Montana notable is that the federal credit lands on top of an existing state program. Montana already runs a Student Scholarship Organization Tax Credit administered by the Department of Revenue through EducationDonations.mt.gov, and the governor's announcement notes a $200,000 per-taxpayer cap on that state credit. The two figures should not be conflated: the $200,000 cap belongs to the Montana state SSO credit, while the federal §25F credit is a separate, dollar-for-dollar offset capped at $1,700 per taxpayer under federal law. For donors, that means Montana households giving to scholarship organizations in 2027 may be able to claim the state credit and the federal credit as distinct benefits on their respective returns, each governed by its own rules. We walk through how the federal figure is fixed in statute in our look at why the cap is $1,700, not $3,400.
For SGO operators in Montana, the opt-in turns an established donation pipeline into a launchpad for the federal program, and the practical question becomes execution: which organizations will administer §25F-backed scholarships, and whether they run the federal program through a vehicle built for federal rules or retrofit an existing state entity. Federal scholarships carry their own requirements, including a 90% scholarship floor and means-testing of recipient families, so operators in states with mature SSO networks have generally found it cleaner to run the federal arm as a purpose-built program. Founders weighing how to structure one of Montana's first federal SGOs can review how the organizations work in our explainers and see the current national landscape in the SGO directory, where a growing number of operators are running their programs on software written for §25F from the start.
Montana's election was confirmed on the IRS roster published June 8, 2026 (IR-2026-76), which listed it among the 27 participating states that had signed up by mid-year. With the credit not available until January 1, 2027, the year ahead is about buildout: standing up the SGO list, defining the application process, and clarifying how the federal credit interacts with the state's SSO program. Montana's status, alongside every other state's, is tracked on our Montana state page and the national participation map.
