House Tax Bill Would Expand Child Tax Credit for Higher Earners, Allow Credit to Expire for Low-Income Families
Tomorrow, the House Ways and Means Committee will mark up a controversial bill that would permanently increase the federal Child Tax Credit for higher earners while doing nothing to stop the credit from expiring completely for lower-income families in 2017.
HR 4935 would increase the existing credit for married couples with incomes between $110,000 and $150,000 and make it newly available to couples with incomes between $150,000 and $205,000. It would also index to inflation the point at which the credit starts to phase out. Both provisions would benefit only higher-income families.
The only part of the bill that would benefit any family receiving the credit is a provision that would index the value of the maximum credit per child (currently $1,000) to inflation.
The bill does not make permanent the ARRA expansion to the Child Tax Credit making families with incomes as low as $3,000 eligible, which is set to expire in 2017. Unless that expansion is extended, in less than three years a single mother working full time will get no credit at all.
Follow us on Twitter @TaxCreditsWF tomorrow as we live tweet about the mark up.