How Many Children In Your State Receive the EITC?
Through the Brookings Institution’s EITC interactive website, you can download the latest tax-return data on the number of tax filers that claim the federal EITC, Child Tax Credit, and Child and Dependent Care Tax Credit. Now, Brookings has just released a new resource: state-by-state estimates of the number of children who benefited from the federal EITC in Tax Year 2012.
These estimates are based on data obtained from the IRS on the number of EITC-claiming households with 1, 2, and 3+ qualifying children by state. Using their Metrotax model, Brookings estimated the number of qualifying children living in 3+ households in order to get a more detailed picture of the number of children benefiting from the EITC. Even so, the state-by-state estimates of how many children benefit are likely low. Households that receive the EITC may also include children who are not considered “qualifying children” for the credit (often because they live in the household less than six months of the year or because they don’t have the requisite legal relationship with the taxpayer), yet they nonetheless benefit from the extra take-home-pay the credit provides.