News Round-Up: December 4, 2017
Here are some highlights from the past week’s news on family tax credit issues.
This weekend, the Senate passed its version of the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act, bringing the GOP’s vision for tax reform one step closer to reality. Though the plan includes an expansion of the Child Tax Credit (CTC), the proposed changes primarily benefit higher-income families and exclude those with lower wages. As Senate and House Republicans work to reconcile the differences between their two tax plans, experts are urging Congress to do more to help low-wage working families:
- Fatima Goss Graves, President and CEO of the National Women’s Law Center (NWLC), and Oliva Golden, CLASP Executive Director, argued that the tax bill’s CTC expansion fails to meet its promise to working families. Graves and Golden suggest that if members of Congress were serious about supporting families, they would instead make real improvements not only to the CTC, but also to the Child and Dependent Care Tax Credit (CDCTC) and the Earned Income Tax Credit.(Medium)
- Bradford Wilcox, director of the National Marriage Project and Samuel Hammond of the Niskanen Center also argued that the GOP’s CTC proposal needs to do much more for those with lower incomes. (The Atlantic)
- Mark Shriver, senior vice president at Save The Children, warned that the proposed CTC expansion is not enough to offset the rising costs of early child care for working families. Shriver urged Congress to expand the CDCTC in addition to the CTC to help children and families reap the educational, health and economic benefits of quality early child care. (Huffington Post)