Advance Payments of the Child Tax Credit

By: Sam Brunson

Yesterday my neighbor texted me to mention that three pieces of my mail had been left in his mailbox; he dropped them off in front of my door. Two were just standard junk mail but one is potentially important: a letter from the Department of the Treasury.

Perhaps you also got this letter: it has some important information about the way the the child tax credit now works. In short, the American Rescue Plan, a law signed in March, makes a number of significant changes to the child tax credit.

Two of those changes are particularly notable. First, it increases the amount of the credit to $3,000 for most children and $3,600 for children five and younger.

Second, it makes allows the IRS to make advance payments of the child tax credit. Essentially, unless parents choose otherwise, starting in July the will receive monthly payments of $250 or $300 per child (depending on the child’s age).

Third, the credit is fully refundable. Even if a parent doesn’t have enough income to owe taxes, they will receive the full amount of the child tax credit.

Finally, the age limit for the child tax credit has been increased from 16 to 17. (Note that currently these changes are all temporary–they only apply to 2021, though the may be extended as some point.)

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IU Tax Policy Colloquium: Burman, “The Rising Tide Wage Credit”

Colloquium pic) — Left to right: Len Burman, Tim Riffle, Leandra Lederman, Karen Ward, Frank DiPietro, Brad Heim

By: Leandra Lederman

On April 5, the Indiana University Maurer School of Law’s Tax Policy Colloquium welcomed Len Burman from Syracuse University and the Urban Institute/Tax Policy Center, who presented “The Rising Tide Wage Credit.” This intriguing new paper is not yet publicly available.

The paper proposes replacing the existing Earned Income Tax Credit (EITC) with a new credit, the Rising Tide Wage Credit (RTWC), which, unlike the EITC, would be universal for workers, rather than phased out above low income levels. The RTWC also would differ from the EITC in that the amount of the RTWC would not depend on the number of children the taxpayer has. Instead, the RTWC would be a 100% credit in the amount of a worker’s wages, up to $10,000 of wages. The credit could be claimed on the taxpayer’s tax return, or subject to advance payment via the taxpayer’s employer. Thus, the maximum credit for an unmarried taxpayer would be $10,000, and for a married couple filing jointly would be $20,000. (The credit would not have a marriage penalty.) The credit would be indexed to increase with increases in GDP.

Because the proposed new credit would not vary with the number of children the taxpayer is supporting, the paper also proposes increasing the child tax credit from $2,000 to $2,500, and proposes making the child tax credit fully refundable (rather than partly refundable, as it is under current law). The RTWC and the increase in the child tax credit would be funded by a value added tax (VAT). The paper estimates that the proposal could be fully funded with an 8% VAT, along with federal income tax on the RTWC. A VAT was chosen as the funding mechanism because it is closely correlated with GDP. The paper discusses 3 illustrative examples and includes a table that shows the overall progressivity of the proposal under certain assumptions. Continue reading “IU Tax Policy Colloquium: Burman, “The Rising Tide Wage Credit”” →

The Expanded Child Tax Credit Is an Imperfect Replacement for Personal Exemptions

By Sam Brunson

Picture courtesy of Pixabay. Used under a CC0 1.0 Universal license. (It’s surprisingly hard to find a picture of a family of five without copyright restrictions!)

The conference tax bill follows both the House and the Senate bills in drastically increasing the standard deduction (from current law’s $13,000 in 2018 to $24,000). At the same time, it gets rid of personal exemptions. As Stephanie Hoffer pointed out eight months ago, eliminating personal exemptions would essentially increase taxes on families of four or more people; the more children a family had, the bigger its tax increase.

To fix that problem, the bill doubles the child tax credit from $1,000 to $2,000 per child. In addition, to get Marco Rubio’s vote, the bill provides that up to $1,400 of each child tax credit is refundable.

So do the child tax credits alleviate the problem of eliminating personal exemptions? Sometimes. Continue reading “The Expanded Child Tax Credit Is an Imperfect Replacement for Personal Exemptions” →

A Mother’s Holiday Letter to Uncle Sam

Dear Mr. Tax Man, Uncle Sam, Sir:

I am writing this letter in December on my ten-minute break at work. I apologize for my rushed handwriting and the tardiness of this letter. I don’t have access to a computer, except for short periods (only 15 minutes per session) at the library. And the lines have gotten too long for me to wait while my three wiggly kids struggle to sit still (only to be hushed by the library staff and patrons every few minutes). I have been really busy balancing my new jobs with the kids’ schedules, especially with the holidays and all the stress and craziness that they add. Continue reading “A Mother’s Holiday Letter to Uncle Sam” →