News Round-up: July 3, 2017
Here are some highlights from the past week’s news and upcoming events on family tax credit issues.
- Senator Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) and other lawmakers met with Ivanka Trump to discuss expanding the Child Tax Credit (CTC) as part of upcoming tax reform. An administration official has since indicated that the credit will be part of a proposal that the White House’s National Economic Council puts forward. (National Review, The Daily Mail)
- California Governor Jerry Brown (D) signed into law a major expansion of the state’s Earned Income Tax Credit (EITC) as part of the state’s 2017-2018 budget. (Leicester Post, TCWF)
- The Illinois House passed a spending plan that would increase the state’s EITC from 10 to 18 percent of the federal credit by 2018. The plan now heads to the Senate, though Governor Bruce Rauner (R) has vowed to veto the plan should it reach his desk as is. (Chicago Sun-Times)
- We blogged about how the Annie E. Casey Foundation’s KIDS COUNT databook lifts up state-level EITCs and CTCs as smart policy for improving overall child well-being. (TCWF)
- Advocates for children in South Carolina credit the KIDS COUNT databook with helping to motivate state lawmakers to do more to reduce child poverty, including the recent passage of a state-level EITC. (Greenville Online)
- A new study by the Wisconsin Budget Project shows how state lawmakers have cut taxes for the wealthy over the past several years while increasing taxes on those earning the least by reducing the size of the state’s EITC, among other measures. (Wisconsin Gazette)
- Forbes contributor Howard Gleckman and Slate columnist Reihan Salam both argued that if the GOP must cut taxes as part of its healthcare plan, it should direct those tax breaks towards those earning the least by expanding federal tax credits for working families, among other measures (Forbes, Slate)