PFD payouts could have been close to $2,100

Permanent Fund Dividend checks will be about $1,000 to every eligible Alaskans this year, since Governor Walker placed a cap on the payouts as part of over $1 billion in vetoes.

But what if he hadn’t? How much money would end up in Alaskans' pockets?

KTUU is estimating payouts would have been about $2,084.00 per eligible Alaskan.

We used the state’s

to find out. Check our math - here's how we got there.

First, we added the Fund’s statutory net income from the previous 5 years.

(Numbers are in millions)

FY2012 – $1,568

FY2013 – $2,982

FY2014 – $3,531

FY 2015 – $2,907

FY2016 – $2,198

TOTAL – $13,186

Then, we multiplied to get the 5-year average. Alaska statute has set that at 21%.

$13,186

x 21%

_____

$2,757

Half of that amount goes towards payouts. That’s about $1,378.

This is where we started estimating. The Permanent Fund Dividend Division couldn’t provide exact numbers for the next part of the formula. Sara Race, the Director of the Division, says the state’s fiscal year just ended. Race says the division is in the process of finding those numbers.

Normally, you would add the amount already in the Dividend fund from the year before, and subtract designated state expenses, the cost of operating the PFD Division, and payment for prior year dividend.

Based on numbers from last year, we’re subtracting about $40,000,000.

That brings us to $1,338.

Then we divided that amount by the number of eligible applicants. This year, 662,339 applied. That’s very close to the number of applicants in 2015. About 20,000 of those applications were ultimately rejected, so we’ll use that number here. That gives us about 642,000 applicants.

1,338,000,000/642,000 = $2084.11

According to the Governor’s Office and the State Department of Revenue, officials are still working to figure out if they will announce what the dividend would have been, and if there will be a formal press conference of any kind ahead of payouts on Oct. 6.