# Education Freedom Scholarships and Opportunity Act

This bill creates a federal tax credit that allows individuals and businesses to donate money to scholarship programs, and then deduct those donations from their federal taxes. Here's how it works in practice: if you donate $1,000 to a scholarship fund that helps students attend private schools, you can reduce your federal income taxes by that amount. The scholarships funded this way would go to students to help pay for tuition at private schools, religious schools, or other educational alternatives to traditional public schools.

The bill essentially uses the tax system to redirect money toward private school scholarships. Instead of the federal government collecting taxes and funding public schools directly, it allows donors to keep more of their tax money by giving it to scholarship programs instead. Businesses could also participate—a company could donate to these scholarship funds and reduce its tax liability. The scholarships would be available to families with various income levels, though the bill includes some income-based restrictions to target assistance toward lower and middle-income students.

This affects several groups differently. Families who want to send their children to private or religious schools could benefit from these scholarships, potentially making private education more affordable. However, public school systems could be affected since federal tax revenue would decrease—money that would have gone to public schools through normal taxation instead goes to private school scholarships. Wealthy individuals and large corporations would benefit most from the tax deduction since they pay higher taxes. States would have some flexibility in how they implement the program, though the bill sets federal guidelines for how the scholarships operate and who can receive them.

Education Freedom Scholarships and Opportunity Act

Cruz, Ted

Education Freedom Scholarships and Opportunity Act This bill allows individual and corporate taxpayers a tax credit for cash contributions to certain scholarship-granting and workforce training organizations. It imposes a cap of $10 billion on the sum of contributions that qualify for a tax credit under this bill. The bill requires the Department of Education, in coordination with the Departments of the Treasury and Labor, to establish, host, and maintain a web portal that (1) lists all eligible scholarship-granting and workforce training organizations; (2) enables contributions to such organizations; (3) provides information about the benefits of this bill; and (4) enables a state to submit and update information about its programs and educational organizations, including information on student eligibility and allowable educational expenses.