Oklahoma locks §25F participation into statute: Stitt signs HB 3704, names Tax Commission as SGO administrator

Oklahoma has written its participation in the federal Education Freedom Tax Credit (§25F) into permanent statute. House Bill 3704, authored by Representative Denise Crosswhite Hader (R-Piedmont) and carried in the Senate by Senator Daniels, declares that the state “hereby elects to participate, to the fullest extent permitted by federal law,” in the §25F program. Governor Kevin Stitt (R) approved the bill on April 17, 2026, according to the official Oklahoma Legislature bill tracker, after the measure was sent to his desk on April 16. The Governor's office folded the signing into an April 20 newsroom announcement listing it among twelve bills enacted that week. The federal credit it locks in is a dollar-for-dollar credit of up to $1,700 per individual taxpayer for contributions to scholarship granting organizations, with scholarships limited to households earning no more than 300 percent of county or area median income, and the program takes effect January 1, 2027.

The vote margins underscore how settled the question was in Oklahoma. The House passed HB 3704 on March 23, 2026 by 73 to 20, and the Senate followed on April 15, 2026 by 38 to 8. The bill's central mechanical contribution is designating the Oklahoma Tax Commission as the administering agency: the OTC is responsible for identifying and registering eligible scholarship granting organizations and for maintaining the approved list that Oklahoma provides to the U.S. Treasury. The statute pairs that grant of authority with a deliberate limit, barring state agencies, including the Tax Commission and the Governor, from adopting rules beyond what federal law requires. That is a clear signal that Oklahoma wants its §25F framework to track Treasury's national rules rather than layer on state-specific guardrails, an approach we examine in our coverage of whether §25F is a federal floor or a ceiling on state restrictions.

HB 3704 is best understood as a statutory backstop rather than the first act of participation. Stitt had already initiated Oklahoma's entry into §25F by executive action earlier in 2026; the legislature then converted that choice into law so it no longer depends on a sitting governor's continued cooperation. This is the same durability logic that drove Idaho to codify its own executive opt-in and that distinguishes statutory participants from the states that came in by governor's pen alone, such as Virginia and Florida. For a program whose viability rests on a state's standing election to the Treasury, putting the election in statute reassures donors and scholarship organizations that Oklahoma is a stable place to build.

For scholarship granting organizations, the operative news is that Oklahoma now has a named registrar. Organizations that want to receive §25F contributions in the state will register with the Oklahoma Tax Commission, which compiles and maintains the list submitted to Treasury; final §25F approval authority still runs through the state's election and the federal process, but the OTC is the practical front door for Oklahoma SGOs. Operators evaluating whether to organize in the state can review our directory of scholarship granting organizations and our primer on how §25F works, and those standing up a program from scratch can run intake, scholarship awards, and Treasury-facing reporting on software built specifically for §25F rather than retrofitting general nonprofit tools.

Oklahoma joins a fast-growing roster of states locking in their §25F status ahead of the January 1, 2027 launch, a group the IRS began formalizing when it published its official list of 27 states that filed advance elections. With the $1,700 per-taxpayer cap and the 300 percent income ceiling fixed in federal law, and with Treasury's previewed proposed regulations expected to set the national implementation calendar, the remaining questions in Oklahoma are operational: how quickly the Tax Commission stands up SGO registration and how the approved list reaches Treasury in time for the first credit year. We track Oklahoma's standing and every other state's on the Oklahoma state page and the national participation map.