News Round Up: August 6, 2018
Here are some highlights from the past week’s news on family tax credit issues:
Top Story: Delaware Governor John Carney (D) is expected to sign legislation that makes the state’s Earned Income Tax Credit (EITC) refundable to provide more benefit to families with the lowest incomes. Though the legislation also reduces the value of the Delaware EITC from 20 percent to 5.9 percent of the federal credit, it will extend the credit to 30,000 additional households. (Center on Budget and Policy Priorities)
- West Virginia delegates Matthew Rohrbach (R) and Chad Lovejoy (D) co-authored an Op-Ed urging their colleagues in the legislature to enact a state-level EITC, which would lower taxes on roughly 140,000 West Virginia households. (The Herald-Dispatch)
- Recently-published research that examined the EITC’s impact on life outcomes for children found that exposure to EITC expansions increases the likelihood of high school and college graduation, as well as employment and higher earnings later in life. (University of Chicago Press Journals)
- Michigan gubernatorial candidates Dr. Abdul El-Sayed (D) and Gretchen Whitmer (D) are both campaigning on an expansion of the state EITC from 6 percent to 20 percent of the federal credit to aid Michigan workers. (The Bridge)
- The Congressional Progressive Caucus published their annual People’s Budget: A Progressive Path Forward for FY 2019. The budget focuses on legislative priorities that create opportunities for America’s most vulnerable populations. The proposal includes a plan to double the federal EITC, expand the credit for workers without dependent children and increase the Child Tax Credit to $3,600 per child under six years old. (The Washington Post)
- Dan Kopf, a reporter for Quartz, analyzed the feasibility of democratic Senator Kamala Harris’s plan to create a tax credit for low-income renters and argued that a better approach to helping working families afford housing might be to expand the federal EITC. (Quartz)