State Opt-In Status: 30 States Are In for 2027

The IRS refreshed its participating-state list on July 24, 2026. Thirty states have now filed an advance election to participate in the federal scholarship tax credit for 2027 — up from twenty-seven when the agency announced the tally in June.

That is more than half the country, and it is the number worth quoting. But the headline count answers a narrower question than most people think it does, and the gap between "my state opted in" and "our SGO can be listed there" is the part that actually governs what an organization should be doing this fall.

This post is the successor to our Spring 2026 status update. The live version of this data — filterable, embeddable, and available as JSON — lives on the state opt-in tracker.

The Thirty States on the IRS List

As of the list's July 24, 2026 revision, these states have filed an advance election for 2027:

• Alabama, Alaska, Arkansas, Colorado, Florida, Georgia
• Idaho, Indiana, Iowa, Kansas, Kentucky, Louisiana
• Mississippi, Missouri, Montana, Nebraska, Nevada, New Hampshire
• North Carolina, North Dakota, Ohio, Oklahoma, South Carolina, South Dakota
• Tennessee, Texas, Utah, Virginia, West Virginia, Wyoming

The authoritative source is the IRS's own Federal Scholarship Tax Credit page, which is where we verify our tracker. Every other list, including ours, is a copy.

What Changed Since June: Three Veto Overrides Landed

The three states added between the June and July lists were Kansas, Kentucky, and North Carolina — and they are precisely the three states where a legislature overrode a governor's veto.

• Kentucky — override of House Bill 1, March 2026
• Kansas — override of Senate Bill 361, April 2026
• North Carolina — override of the veto of House Bill 87, June 2026

That pattern is worth understanding, because it corrects a common misreading of how states get in. Section 25F does not require a state to pass a law. It requires an election, filed with the IRS on Form 15714 by the governor or another individual or entity designated under state law. Some states elected by executive order — Alabama's governor signed one in January 2026. Others enacted authorizing legislation first. And in these three, the legislature used state law to route around a veto.

If you have been tracking this by watching for bills, you have been watching the wrong instrument. Several of the thirty never passed a §25F opt-in bill at all.

The Part the Count Does Not Tell You: No SGO Is Listed Anywhere

Here is the correction that matters most for anyone planning a launch.

Being on the IRS participating-state list is not the same as being a state where a Scholarship Granting Organization can get approved. Two separate things have to happen, and only the first one has happened anywhere:

• The state files its advance election. Thirty states have done this.
• The state submits a certified list of the qualifying SGOs located in it. No state has done this.

The reason is that the rules for the second step do not exist yet. In Notice 2025-70, the IRS was explicit: "The deadline and procedure for perfecting the Advance Election by submitting the State SGO list will be provided in future guidance." Treasury has committed to proposed regulations by the end of September 2026. The statutory default is that a state's list is due by January 1 of the applicable year, or as soon as practicable for the program's first year — but the mechanics are still open.

So when you hear that an organization is "an approved SGO in thirty states," treat it the way you would treat a restaurant advertising a Michelin star in a country that has not published a guide. There is no federally listed SGO in the United States today. There cannot be one until states start publishing lists, and states cannot publish lists until the procedure exists.

Our SGO directory is empty for exactly this reason, and will stay empty until those lists start appearing.

The Announced-But-Not-Filed Column

New York is the state most often miscounted, and it is worth being careful about.

Governor Hochul announced in May 2026 that New York intends to participate, pending the federal regulations. That is a real signal — it made New York the second Democratic-led state to move toward the program — but an intent statement is not an election, and New York does not appear on the July 24 IRS list. Our tracker keeps it out of the opted-in column for that reason. You can read the full note on the New York state page.

The practical difference is not academic. A donor cannot claim the credit for a 2027 gift to a New York SGO unless New York files, and New York publishes a list that includes that organization. Announcements do not get you there.

Who Has Said No

Six states have declined outright: Arizona, Hawaii, Minnesota, New Mexico, Oregon, and Wisconsin.

Arizona and Wisconsin are the ones that surprise people, because both run large, long-established state-level scholarship tax credit programs. Those programs are unaffected — they operate independently of the federal credit — but their existence did not translate into federal participation. In both states the path ran into a gubernatorial veto.

The important caveat: states elect annually. A "no" for 2027 is a one-year answer, not a permanent one, and a state that declined this cycle can elect for 2028 without undoing anything.

The Twelve That Have Not Acted

California, Connecticut, Delaware, Illinois, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, Vermont, and Washington have neither filed an election nor taken formal public action.

Look at that list and notice the concentration. Pennsylvania, Illinois, California, and New Jersey are among the largest private-school populations in the country. Their absence from the 2027 list does not stop their residents from claiming the credit — a donor's own state of residence is irrelevant to eligibility, as we covered in the donor state asymmetry. It stops their students from receiving the scholarships. Credits claimed by residents of these twelve states in 2027 will fund students somewhere else.

That asymmetry is the single most effective argument available to advocates in holdout states, and it is why the 2027 tax year is likely to be the most persuasive lobbying document anyone produces.

Why November Matters More Than Any Bill

Because elections are annual and are made by governors (or their designees), the November 3, 2026 gubernatorial races are the most consequential event on this calendar. New governors are seated in January 2027, in time to elect for 2028.

Michigan is the clearest case. Its governor has declined to commit pending federal guidance, and the State Board of Education voted in May 2026 to urge non-participation — but the next realistic decision point follows the election, not a legislative session. The Michigan state page tracks it.

Expect the participating-state count to move twice more before the program starts: once as remaining 2027 elections trickle in ahead of whatever deadline the September regulations set, and again in the first quarter of 2027 as new administrations decide about 2028.

What This Means for Your Organization

If you are in one of the thirty. The federal work is the work: 501(c)(3) status with a primary SGO mission, governing documents, the no-earmarking policy, an arm's-length award process, the 90/10 discipline, and awards to ten or more students who do not all attend the same school. None of that depends on your state's process, all of it takes months, and the organizations that finish it now will be the ones able to file the day their state opens its listing process. Waiting for the regulations to start is a way of guaranteeing you are not ready.

If you are in a holdout state. Two things are true at once: your students cannot receive federal scholarship money in 2027, and your donors can still claim the credit by giving to an SGO listed elsewhere. That is a bridge, not a permanent design. The organized version of readiness is a state-conditional pledge campaign — commitments that only process if and when your state elects — which gives you a real number to bring to your statehouse instead of an argument. ClearPath Pledge exists for that.

How to Track This Yourself

We re-verify the full fifty-state table against the IRS list and stamp both dates on the tracker page, so you can see how fresh the data is rather than guessing. The whole dataset is free to reuse:

• The tracker — filterable, with per-state notes and review dates
• A machine-readable JSON feed — CORS-enabled, free to cite with attribution
• An embeddable map for newsrooms and advocacy sites
• A guide page for every state, with what the status means for donors, families, and founders

If you are weighing formation, the status of your state is one input among several — the OBBBA explainer covers the federal requirements that apply no matter where you sit.

A note on currency. This reflects the IRS participating-state list dated July 24, 2026. State status changes, and nothing here is legal advice or a definitive statement of any state's position — verify with counsel before making formation decisions.