News Round-up: June 5, 2017
Here are some highlights from the past week’s news and upcoming events on family tax credit issues.
- After South Carolina passed a bill to create a state-level Earned Income Tax Credit (EITC), the editorial board of North Carolina‘s Charlotte Observer urged that state’s legislature to follow suit and reinstate the credit it eliminated in 2014. The editors wrote that the legislature should learn from South Carolina’s bipartisan campaign earlier this year that resulted in an EITC worth 125 percent of the federal credit (Charlotte Observer).
- In California, members of the state Assembly are pushing for a bill that would increase the income cap for the state EITC to $22,000, a change that would allow thousands more families to collect the credit. Currently, households making under $15,000 per year are eligible for the credit, only about half of the federal phase-in range for tax year 2015 (Huffington Post, Inland Empire Community News).
- Advocates in Connecticut are pushing back against budget proposals that would reduce the size and strength of the state EITC. Republican legislators proposed making the credit non-refundable, which would significantly weaken the credit’s ability to reduce poverty (WNPR).
- Jared Bernstein, a senior fellow at the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, wrote about the Democratic Party’s economic strategy, which centers on antipoverty policies including a massive expansion of the EITC (New York Times).
- Rep. Rosa DeLauro (D-CT) wrote a book outlining her years of fighting for working families, including her efforts to expand the EITC and CTC (New Haven Register).