Washington, D.C. — Today, the Orthodox Union Advocacy Center (OUA)—the nonpartisan public policy arm of the Union of Orthodox Jewish Congregations of America, the nation’s largest Orthodox Jewish umbrella organization—welcomed the Trump Administration’s release of proposed regulations to implement the Education Freedom Tax Credit (EFTC) in January 2027.

The EFTC was enacted last year in the “One Big Beautiful Bill Act.” OU Advocacy worked for its enactment in that law. It creates a federal tax credit for people to make contributions to a Scholarship Granting Organization (SGO), which will then disburse the funds to families to cover a wide range of K-12 education-related expenses, including tuition to Jewish or other nonpublic schools, tutoring, after-school programs, and more.

The proposed regulations released today by the Treasury Department contain two essential provisions that OUA advocated for:

• First, the legislation (which specified a tax credit of $1,700 per individual contributor to an SGO) is interpreted to allow married couples to donate up to $3,400 to an SGO and receive a 100% tax credit for that amount; and
• Second, while the legislation requires governors of each state to opt their state into the program, the governors may not impose additional conditions on SGOs in their state that are more restrictive than the federal law. (Examples of this would be restrictions based on the types of schools scholarship recipients may attend or the types of qualified education expenses scholarships may fund.)

Nathan Diament, Executive Director of the Orthodox Union Advocacy Center, stated: “The Orthodox Union Advocacy Center applauds President Trump, Secretary Bessent, and their teams at the White House and Treasury Department for proposing regulations that are aligned with the historic goal we share—empowering parents to make the best educational decisions for their children’s K-12 education. While we continue to review the proposal released today, we are thankful that the proposed regulations contain key points for which we advocated—the amount of tax credit available to married couples and the proper role of states’ governors.”