This year’s Permanent Fund dividend will be $1,000, an amount set by the Alaska Legislature in House Bill 53, the state’s annual operating budget bill, earlier this year.
Ordinarily, lawmakers allocate an amount of money for the dividend, which makes individual payments dependent upon the number of recipients.
The Alaska Department of Revenue then announces the final amount in September.
This year, lawmakers set a specific dividend amount, which turned the Alaska Department of Revenue’s fall announcement, released Friday, into an anticlimax.
Alaskans whose PFD applications were filed electronically, whose applications were approved as of Sept. 18, and who requested direct deposit, will begin to receive their payments Oct. 2.
Those whose applications are approved by Oct. 13 will receive their dividends starting Oct. 23.
That includes people who applied for the dividend on paper forms or requested paper checks.
Paying a $1,000 dividend to all recipients was expected to cost $685.3 million, making it one of the largest single expenses in Alaska’s annual state budget.
Only the Alaska Department of Education and Early Development ($1.4 billion) and the Alaska Department of Health ($1.1 billion) are more expensive.
The 2026 dividend is expected to be larger, if lawmakers agree to spend from the state’s Constitutional Budget Reserve.
Since 2020, lawmakers have approved larger dividends in election years than in non-election years.
The Alaska Permanent Fund, an $83 billion state trust fund, is the largest source of general-purpose revenue for state services, paying for between 50-60% of state operations in an ordinary year. Oil revenue, by comparison, supplies only about a third of state revenue.
Since 1982, a portion of the fund has been paid out to Alaskans in an annual dividend. The payment was set by formula until 2016, when lawmakers — facing severe budget shortfalls — began setting it by fiat. The formula remains in state law, but legislators are not obliged to follow it.
James Brooks is a longtime Alaska reporter, having previously worked at the Anchorage Daily News, Juneau Empire, Kodiak Mirror and Fairbanks Daily News-Miner. This article originally appeared online at alaskabeacon.com. Alaska Beacon, an affiliate of States Newsroom, is an independent, nonpartisan news organization focused on connecting Alaskans to their state government.
