Registration to sign up for the 2021 permanent fund dividend is reaching it’s deadline of March 31st. Residents can file for their PFD online at pfd.alaska.gov.
According to the MyPFD site: “To be eligible for the PFD check, an applicant must have been an Alaska resident for an entire calendar year preceding the date they applied for a dividend and intend to stay in Alaska indefinitely. Applicants who wish to receive a PFD must also not claim residency in another state or country. Residents who are absent from Alaska for more than 180 days are also not eligible to receive a PFD check.”
The most recent PFD release was an early 2020 PFD in July, an attempt by Governor Mike Dunleavy to stimulate the pandemic-plagued economic downfall last Summer. That payout was for $992, coming earlier than the usual autumn distribution of dividend checks.
Governor Dunleavy originally campaigned on a dividend funded under the formula set in a 1982 state law, which would have been roughly $3,000 for 2019. But the House of Representatives and the Senate passed a smaller amount of $1,600, then an even smaller amount in 2020. Recently, the Governor proposed that 2021’s PFD checks total $4,972 per Alaskan. The proposal is made up of: a) a supplement to 2020’s dividend and b) a regular dividend calculated by the 1980s guidelines. The state legislature has final say on setting the amount of the dividend.
The Permanent Fund Dividend was created in 1980 to share a portion of the oil wealth with residents. The first PFD was designed to reward longevity and a commitment to residency by giving every adult Alaska resident $50 for every year of residency since statehood in 1959. Payment of dividends remained under litigation till 1982 when the program was revised to give an equal share to every Alaskan.
