ATLANTA – Advocates and opponents can agree on at least one thing: The new federal school choice tax credit is a monumental shift in tax and education policy in the U.S.

But it’s too soon to tell whether Georgia — which has a similar initiative in place — will participate in the first-of-its-kind national program.

Congress created a federal school voucher program as part of the One Big Beautiful Bill Act. Individual taxpayers can donate up to $1,700 to fund scholarships, in exchange for a discount of the same amount on what they owe in federal taxes. States must opt in, but there’s no cap on how much money the program can receive every year, and there’s no end date.

The program won’t start until Jan. 1, 2027. There are a lot of questions to answer in the meantime about how it will work.

Students whose families make up to 300% of their county’s median income qualify to receive a scholarship, meaning most Georgia families would qualify, said Ashley Young, a policy analyst at the left-leaning Georgia Budget and Policy Institute. In Fulton County, for example, households that earn up to about $275,000 per year would qualify.

Congress’ Joint Committee on Taxation predicted the program will cost at least $3 billion per year. But the Institute of Taxation and Economic Policy predicts the annual cost will be much higher. If 5 million people donate, the cost will be more than $8 billion per year, the group said.

Spokespersons for Gov. Brian Kemp and State School Superintendent Richard Woods declined The Atlanta Journal-Constitution’s request for interviews and did not respond to emailed questions about the voucher program. Education and Youth Committee Chairman and state Sen. Billy Hickman, R-Statesboro, and State Board of Education Chairman Stan DeJarnett both said those conversations have not taken place yet.

“Personally, as chairman of the state board, I think it’s a little bit of an overreach to do something that’s really the state’s responsibility,” DeJarnett said. “But we haven’t had any serious conversations.”

Few states have announced whether they’ll opt in to the program so far, according to an analysis published recently by Education Week. States with Republican leaders tended to be more eager to learn about the program, while Democrat-led states voiced more questions.

But the federal program mirrors one of the three voucher programs Georgia already has in place. That’s why Kyle Wingfield, president and CEO of the right-leaning Georgia Public Policy Foundation, assumes state officials would be happy to opt in to the program.

“It looks like it’s going to be a real opportunity for a lot of Georgia students to get another option if the school they’re attending currently is not the best fit for them,” he said.

The Qualified Education Expense Tax Credit in Georgia also provides a dollar-for-dollar tax break to donors. The program has been around since 2008 and is currently capped at $120 million per year.

And this year, Georgia rolled out a new option: the Georgia Promise Scholarship. Students who attend one of the state’s lowest-performing schools can apply for $6,500 scholarships to cover things like private school tuition.

“(The federal voucher) is only going to continue to fuel this momentum that we’re already seeing from the Georgia Promise Scholarship,” Young said.

Opponents of voucher programs like these say they siphon public money to private schools, which have fewer regulations to comply with than public schools. Public schools usually get state funding on a per-pupil basis. If students leave public schools to attend private schools, that’s a hit to their funding, critics say. And when schools lose funding, it increases the cost to educate each of the remaining students.

A GBPI analysis found that from 2008-2021, $1.3 billion was diverted by Georgia’s voucher programs. Rural districts, which tend to rely more on state and federal revenue, may be the most affected by additional voucher programs.

But local funding, which makes up the largest share of Georgia public school funding overall and can vary widely between districts, is based primarily on tax revenue, not the number of students. That’s part of why advocates argue that public schools don’t actually lose money to private school voucher programs. They say school systems are able to offset lost state revenue with reduced expenses and local and federal revenue.

“This is not going to be a killer in any way for public schools,” Wingfield said.

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