When Americans file their taxes in the coming weeks, one group will be singled out for a tax hike: middle-class families with children. This April, a family with three children making at least $42,000 will pay about $950 more in (inflation-adjusted) federal income taxes than they paid in 2018 — when the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act went into effect. But what’s to blame? Historically high inflation that has eroded the real value of the child tax credit in recent years.

Think about it this way. Parents whose wages are just barely keeping up with inflation, who are raising three kids on $75,000 per year (the median U.S. household income), will be asked to kick in almost $1,000 more to the federal government than they paid six years ago — at the same time that adults without children will face no tax increase at all. What’s worse is that for every additional kid you have, your tax hike will be about $300 higher.

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