Weekly News Round-up: April 4, 2016

Here are some highlights from the past week’s news and upcoming events on family tax credit issues. Remember – you also can track news coverage throughout the week by visiting our website, where you can filter news by a specific credit or state.

  • Republican state legislators in Delaware introduced a package of bills to combat poverty across the state with the goal of making Delaware the lowest-poverty state in the nation by 2024. The eleven bills included a measure to make the state’s Earned Income Tax Credit (EITC) refundable (Delaware Online, Delaware State News).
  • One week remains in the 2016 Maryland General Assembly session, leaving lawmakers little time to decide if an expansion of the state’s EITC should be coupled with a tax break for high-income earners (WBAL TV).
  • The city of Philadelphia spent $1 million this year to increase EITC awareness and ensure more eligible workers collect the credit. Advocates and Volunteer Income Tax Assistance (VITA) preparers across Pennsylvania worked on this initiative (Marketplace).
  • Angela Rachidi of the American Enterprise Institute wrote about the importance of child care subsidies to reducing poverty and encouraging work (AEI).
  • Chuck Marr, director of federal tax policy at the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, wrote that renewing expiring provisions of the EITC and Child Tax Credit was an historic anti-poverty achievement (CBPP).