Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp signed a one-time tax rebate of $250 for single filers, $375 for heads of household and $500 for joint filers on Friday.
This comes after the Georgia state Senate unanimously passed the bill on Monday.
The rebate would go to those who filed their tax returns for 2024 and 2025. According to Commissioner of the Department of Revenue David Burge, those who have filed those returns could see checks hit their accounts in six to eight weeks.
“This measure doesn’t pick winners and losers. It helps all Georgia taxpayers,” Kemp said at the Friday signing.
The tax rebate, totaling more than $1 billion, is one of Kemp’s priorities for the 2026 legislative session and one of the least controversial tax proposals this year. The Georgia House of Representatives also gave House Bill 1000 a unanimous favorable vote earlier this month.
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Republicans have been advancing several tax bills this year to combat inflation-driven price increases, including proposals to lower local property taxes and income taxes.
House Bill 1001 lowers the flat personal income tax rate from 5.19% to 4.99% for tax year 2026, a bill that the governor supports and that has already passed out of the House. Another bill, House Bill 880, continues the current 0.10% annual reduction in the income tax rate but lowers the floor from 4.99% to 3.99%.
“This is a good tax refund, giving Georgians back their money,” said state Sen. Bo Hatchett, R-Cornelia, who sponsored the legislation in the Senate, on Monday.
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Hatchett said the tax rebate is something Democrats and Republicans can both agree on.
“We’ve been able to do it four times, and we’ve been able to do it because we’ve been very fiscally conservative with our budgeting,” Hatchett said. “Hopefully we’ll be able to do it again, but I’m proud we’ve been able to do it four times now.”
Senate Minority Leader Harold Jones said Democrats support the bill because it “doesn’t gut the budget” or raise other kinds of taxes like sales taxes.
“I think it’s a good common sense, legislation, doesn’t go as far as like some of these other bills that have been out there, but we were proud to vote for it and give a Georgian an opportunity to kind of take advantage of some of the things we’re doing at the Capitol,” he said.
WABE’s Rahul Bali contributed reporting to this story.
