Credits and breaks for Idaho families: the $155 per person, and what left

The thing an Idaho parent needs to know for 2026 is that the $205 Idaho child tax credit is gone. Idaho Code section 63-3029L covered tax years 2018 through 2025, the bill to make it permanent died when the Legislature adjourned April 2, 2026, and the Idaho State Tax Commission rewrote its withholding tables in July 2026 to stop withholding for it. A family with two children pays about $410 more Idaho tax for 2026 than for 2025 at the same income. What a child adds to the Idaho return now is the food tax credit, $155 per person, refundable, claimed on Form 40 line 43. Beyond that the state offers deductions rather than credits: the federal standard deduction for head of household ($24,150 for 2026) comes across on line 16, child care expenses from federal Form 2441 come off on Form 39R, deposits to Idaho’s IDeal college savings plan come off up to $6,000 or $12,000, and private school tuition can earn the refundable Parental Choice Tax Credit of up to $5,000 a student if you applied and were awarded it. The federal child tax credit and the federal earned income credit do not touch the Idaho return, and Idaho has no versions of its own.

At 5.3%, a deduction is worth $53 per $1,000. That is the number to keep in mind through this article, because almost everything Idaho gives a family is a deduction.

What is on the return and what is not

Line numbers are from the 2025 forms, revised March 2, 2026. The 2026 forms had not been published when this was written.

The food tax credit: count the people

Idaho taxes groceries at the full 6% sales tax, and the food tax credit is the refund. It is $155 for you, $155 for your spouse, and $155 for each qualifying dependent, on Form 40 line 43, and it is refundable, so a family with no Idaho tax still gets the money. A family of five collects $775. The 2025 instructions prorate at $12.92 a month: a child born in September earns four months, $52. No credit is allowed for any month a person received SNAP benefits, was incarcerated or lived in the country illegally, and a dependent claimed on someone else’s return cannot claim it for himself. Families that keep grocery receipts can instead claim the actual Idaho sales tax paid on food, up to $250 per person, but at 6% that takes more than $2,583 of groceries per person a year before it beats the flat $155, and the receipts have to be scanned and kept.

House Bill 231 (2025) raised the credit to $155 and renamed it from the grocery credit. Nothing in the 2026 session changed it; the 2026 figure is to come.

The child tax credit that ended

The $205 credit was nonrefundable and went to each qualifying child age 16 or under at year end. It was written to expire with tax year 2025. Senate Bill 1450, introduced March 31, 2026 to make it permanent, died in committee two days later when the session ended. On July 31, 2026 the Department told employers the credit “has sunsetted” and issued revised withholding tables without it, effective going forward and without recalculating earlier months. For 2026 there is nothing to claim. If your Idaho withholding was set under the old tables for the first seven months of the year, expect to be short by about seven-twelfths of $205 per child, roughly $120 a child. Idaho charges no underpayment penalty; the balance is simply due April 15, 2027.

Child care: a deduction on Form 39R

Idaho has no dependent care credit. It has a deduction on Form 39R, Part B, line 6, figured on a worksheet in the instructions from the expenses reported on federal Form 2441, and it requires Form 2441 to be attached. The 2025 instructions put the worksheet on page 30; its ceiling and mechanics should be confirmed against the 2026 instructions when they are published (verify). The federal rules on who counts as a qualifying person and what counts as work-related care carry over because Idaho starts from the federal form. A deduction of $6,000 saves $318 of Idaho tax.

IDeal: the deduction the federal return never mentions

Contributions to IDeal, Idaho’s 529 plan, are deductible on Form 39R, Part B, line 14, up to $6,000 a year for a single or head-of-household filer and $12,000 on a joint return. You need not itemize. The deadline is December 31; a deposit on January 2 belongs to the next year. Contributions to another state’s 529 plan do not qualify. Grandparents who are Idaho residents get the deduction for their own IDeal deposits for a grandchild. The catch is the addback: a nonqualified withdrawal is added back to Idaho income in full on Form 39R, Part A, line 4, contributions and earnings alike, and a rollover to another state’s plan or to an ABLE account adds back the contributions deducted in the year of the rollover and the year before. Because the federal return never asks about 529 deposits, this is the Idaho deduction most often forgotten; bring the year-end IDeal statement.

Parental Choice Tax Credit

The credit, created by House Bill 93 (2025), pays up to $5,000 per eligible student, or $7,500 for a student with a qualifying disability, toward nonpublic K-12 costs: full-time private school tuition or a curriculum covering at least English, math, science and social studies, textbooks, tutoring in the four core subjects, transportation to and from school (keep a mileage log), and standardized, college-admission, AP and certification exams. It is refundable and it is not automatic. You apply through My School Choice during the application window, the Department awards or declines, and only an awarded amount can be claimed, on Form 40 line 42, after the award notice arrives. The Department’s page says plainly that you cannot claim the credit unless you applied and were awarded it. Households at or below 300% of the federal poverty level have priority; the rest is first come, first served until the statewide money runs out.

For 2026, a household could instead take an advance payment during the year, paid within 60 days of the award notice or by August 30, 2026 (first application period) or November 14, 2026 (second period). An advance payment has strings: it is taxable on the 2026 federal return, it must be reconciled with paid receipts on the Parental Choice dashboard in Taxpayer Access Point by December 31, 2027, anything spent outside the law or without receipts must be repaid, and a child may receive an advance payment only once in a K-12 career. House Bill 934 (2026) tightened the advance-payment rules, including student age limits and a bar on using funds for a semester the student attended public school (verify). The application window for the 2026 credit, claimed on the return filed in 2027, had not been announced when this was written. Details of the 2026 season are in What’s new in Idaho for 2026.

Head of household, dependents and filing status

Idaho filing status must match the federal return. A single parent who qualifies as head of household federally gets the $24,150 standard deduction on Form 40 line 16 for 2026, $8,050 more than a single filer, worth $427 of Idaho tax. The zero bracket at the bottom of the rate schedule is the same for head of household as for a joint return: $9,622 on the 2025 return (the 2026 indexed figure is to come), against $4,811 for a single filer. So head-of-household status is worth about $255 more at the zero bracket as well. Which parent claims a child follows the federal rules, and the parent who claims the child federally is the one who gets the child’s $155 food tax credit.

A dependent child with a summer job files his own Form 40 if his gross income reaches the federal filing threshold for a dependent, takes the dependent’s standard deduction (the greater of $1,350 or earned income plus $450, capped at the regular amount, for 2025; 2026 figures to come), and cannot claim his own food tax credit, since his parents claim it for him.

College and beyond

Idaho has no tuition credit or deduction of its own. The federal American Opportunity and Lifetime Learning credits reduce federal tax only. What Idaho offers a college family is the IDeal deduction going in and, on the way out, nothing: qualified 529 withdrawals are not in federal AGI and so never reach Form 40. Student loan interest, deducted above the line federally, flows through to Idaho because Form 40 starts from federal AGI. A parent who gives to an Idaho college, university, school or its foundation can take the educational entities credit: 50% of the gift, up to $500 ($1,000 joint) and no more than half the Idaho tax, on top of any federal charitable deduction.