Weekly News Round-up: May 16, 2016
- The Oklahoma Senate Appropriations Committee passed a bill to eliminate the refundable portion of the state’s Earned Income Tax Credit (EITC). Policy groups, religious leaders and other advocates across the state are calling on lawmakers to preserve the credit’s refundability (Oklahoma Policy Institute, Tulsa World).
- Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton announced her plans to create tax credits and subsidies to lower the cost of child care across the country. Although the campaign has not released details of her proposal, the Center for American Progress, which has been advising Clinton on policy, has recommended creating a new child care tax credit, which could be worth up to $14,000 per child (Washington Post).
- Budget analysts in Rhode Island predicted that the state will experience a budget surplus this year and lawmakers, including Gov. Gina Raimondo (D), announced they want to use the funds to expand the state’s EITC (Providence Journal).
- As the New Jersey legislature continues to debate how to fund infrastructure and transportation projects, Senate President Stephen Sweeney (D) announced he supports expanding the state’s EITC to mitigate the burden a potential gas tax increase across the state could place on low-income workers (NJ Spotlight).
- Richard Berman wrote in TIME Magazine that presidential candidate Donald Trump (R) could unite the Republican party by supporting policies that conservatives favor, including the EITC (TIME).
- The bill that renewed expiring provisions of the EITC and CTC also contained a measure requiring the IRS to wait until February 15 to issue tax refund checks each year, which could harm the lowest-income families who rely on their tax refunds to make ends meet (TCWF,Marketplace, Wall Street Journal).