“There’s a tremendous amount of interest in these credits and in taxpayers making donations to public school districts and to student scholarship organizations,” Zammit said Tuesday.
In a memo from Jan. 21, Zammit said that seven student scholarship organizations had registered and been approved through the department’s donations portal. The organizations include ACE Scholarships, Big Sky Scholarships, Holy Spirit Catholic School, Intermountain Children’s Services, Missoula Catholic Schools Foundation, St. Mart’s Catholic School, St. Matthew’s Catholic School and The Way Christian School.
There were 64 donors who made 69 contributions with an average amount just shy of $14,500. Of those donations, 55 were made by individuals and nine came from businesses.
On the public side, Zammit told lawmakers there were requests for preapprovals of donations totaling more than $1.5 million, showing demand outpaced the cap. That’s also likely a low estimate of what was attempted to be donated, Zammit said.
“As we move forward into 2023 and 2024 it’s very likely that we will be hitting that 80% threshold,” Zammit said. “Where that ends up plateauing out is a little difficult to try and decipher or discern.”
Zammit said from the technical side of the process, things went well from the Revenue department’s perspective, even with the crush of demand on the public side.
— to billingsgazette.com
