News Round-up: February 14, 2017
Here are some highlights from the past week’s news and upcoming events on family tax credit issues.
- Members of the House Committee on Ways and Means introduced bills to improve tax credits for workers and families. Rep. Richard Neal (D-Mass.) proposed a bill that would lower the Earned Income Tax Credit’s (EITC’s) age requirement from 25 to 21 and expand the EITC for workers not raising children. Rep. Rose DeLauro (D-Conn.) announced her bill to index the Child Tax Credit (CTC) for inflation and expand the credit for parents raising children under the age of six (Accounting Today).
- Yesterday, TCWF and Spotlight on Poverty and Opportunity hosted a bipartisan Capitol Hill policy briefing to discuss how tax credits for workers will fare during tax reform and under the Trump administration. A full video of the briefing will be available on our website.
- Connecticut Dannel Malloy (D) announced his budget proposal for the upcoming fiscal year, which includes a permanent reduction in the state’s EITC from 27.5 to 25 percent of the federal credit (Norwich Bulletin, Connecticut Mirror).
- Georgia Ways and Means Committee Chairman Jay Powell (R) introduced a bill that would create a state EITC while eliminating state income tax brackets and imposing a flat 5.4 percent tax on all Georgians (The Atlanta Journal Constitution).
- The West Virginia Senate created a Select Committee on Tax Reform to examine how changes to the tax code could strengthen the state’s economy. Committee leaders said they will consider creating a state EITC (The State Journal).
- In South Carolina, a legislator introduced a bill to create a state EITC worth 20 percent of the federal credit (State House Report).
- David Reyes, director of the Assets Independence Coalition (AIC) wrote about the importance of the Michigan EITC to families across the state and cautioned the state legislature against scaling back the program (Lansing State Journal).
- North Carolina Policy Watch released a radio spot encouraging the state to restore its EITC (North Carolina Policy Watch).