Individual K–12 Tax Credits & Deductions

Individual tax credits and deductions allow parents to receive state income tax relief for approved educational expenses, which can include private school tuition, books, supplies, computers, tutors and transportation. Tax credits lower the total taxes a person owes; a deduction reduces a person’s total taxable income.

How Individual K–12 Education Tax Credits and Deductions Work

Individual Tax Credit/Deduction Programs

Fast Facts

Do you know how many taxpayers across the country are using individual K–12 education tax credit and deduction programs?

States with K–12 Tax Credits & Deductions

There are 8 individual tax credit and deduction programs in 7 states—Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, Louisiana, Minnesota, Ohio (2), and Wisconsin.

Fast Facts
  1. Estimated number of tax returns claiming tax credits for educational expenses states with operating programs: more than 332,000.
  2. Tax credits for educational expenses, including private school tuition, were started in Iowa in 1987.
  3. Illinois has the largest tax credit program in terms of participation: 210,224 tax returns in 2024.
  4. Illinois’s, Oklahoma’s, Minnesota’s and Iowa’s credit/deduction programs are the nation’s largest in terms of eligibility: 100 percent of tax-paying families.
  5. Tax credits were declared constitutional in Illinois in 1999, after two lawsuits argued Illinois’s tax credit program violated the First Amendment of the U.S. Constitution and religion clauses of the Illinois Constitution. Illinois appellate courts upheld the programs and the Illinois Supreme Court refused to grant appeals (Toney v. Bower, Griffith v. Bower). Tax deductions were declared constitutional in 1983, when the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in favor of Minnesota’s tax deduction program (Mueller v. Allen).