The definitions below reference maximum credit tiers (represented as a spreadsheet Excel | PDF, and as a map). Bolded lines are new rules beginning with tax year 2018.

• Must be licensed by the State of Oregon.
• NPs & PAs whose practice is rural.
• Must provide a minimum of 20 hours per week of patient care, averaged over the month in an eligible rural area.
• Has an individual adjusted gross income not in excess of $300,000 for the tax year.
• Eligible NPs must attest to being willing throughout the tax year to serve patients with Medicare and Medicaid coverage. The practitioner must accept patients insured by Medicare and Medicaid until his/her patient panel reaches a threshold of 20 percent Medicare and 15 percent Medicaid, or the same percentage as in the county population if that percentage is less.
• There are now tiers that dictate the maximum possible tax credit amount. Those tiers are as follows based upon the location of your practice site (measured in a straight line, not road miles):

  If an eligible practitioner meets the criteria of more than one tier, the maximum possible credit would be that of the higher tier.

  • Tier 1: 10-20 miles from the centroid of a community with a population of 40,000 or more = $3,000
  • Tier 2: 20-50 miles from the centroid of a community with a population of 40,000 or more = $4,000
  • Tier 3: 50+ miles from the centroid of a community with a population of 40,000 or more = $5,000

10-Year Limit

Beginning with tax year 2018, eligible practitioners can claim only 10 eligible tax years.

Amending Previous Years

This credit is amendable for 3 previous tax years.

Example: tax year 2021 (currently the oldest amendable year) is amendable until the tax filing deadline in 2025.

Prorated

The credit is prorated on a month-by-month basis. Each eligible month is worth 8.33% of the overall credit.

Eligible Hours

The only time allowed for the credit is direct patient care (this includes charting for those patients). Not allowed are on-call hours, education, travel, vacation, holidays, leave of any sort, or administrative time.

Hours are to be reported as averaged work weeks for each month. If you do not know what your average work week is, divide your monthly total direct patient care hours by 4.

Do not report monthly totals (i.e.: 160), ranges (i.e.: 8-16), or approximations (i.e.: 24+, or ~20). Report only the exact averaged work week of direct patient care as it was for each month within the tax year.

Locum Tenens, Home Health, and Telemedicine

Locum tenens, home health, and telemedicine are all eligible, but as with all claims for this credit, each participant is required to report average work week hours for each eligible practice site. Hours and sites cannot be combined.

If providing home health, the patient’s street address must state patient home, with the rest of the data completed. If there are multiple patient homes in the same city within a month, this is the only case where sites can be combined for a month’s hours.

Program Sunset

The program's current sunset date is December 31, 2027. Should the program be discontinued at that time, a taxpayer who meets the eligibility requirements for tax year 2027, could be allowed the credit through tax year 2036, as long as they maintain all eligibility requirements.

Forms

These forms are electronic. If possible, please fill out as much as possible on the computer and take a screenshot if you would like to retain a copy of your application.

2021

ORH

You can expect to receive confirmation of your eligibility within six weeks of receipt at ORH (but probably sooner) during the months of January, February, and March and within three weeks the rest of the year.

Oregon DOR

The Oregon Department of Revenue (DOR) can take up to 48 hours to confirm data from ORH. If you file prior to the date specified on your ORH confirmation, you could run the risk of the DOR software automatically denying your claim for the credit because the DOR system might not yet have recorded the ORH submission.

Please wait for 48 hours to pass after confirmation before claiming the credit on your state taxes, or if you are applying or renewing prior to the end of January in any tax year, please wait until the end of January to ensure the DOR is accepting new tax year data.