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October 18, 2024

Pro-Marriage Conservatives Should Reject a Per-Child Phase-In of the Child Tax Credit

…Credit in four ways. First, they would increase the maximum Child Tax Credit from $2,000 to $3,000, a costly increase. A better idea would be to immediately increase the maximum…

September 19, 2024

Government benefit programs already do a lot to help low income families

…work and have no tax liability do not benefit at all from the CTC. Proposals to increase the generosity of the CTC would generally increase the maximum amount and allow…

August 24, 2024

Harris’s Child Tax Credit Proposal Could Backfire, Perpetuating Poverty

…increased dollar amounts have attracted most of the attention, a key motivation for these proposals is to ensure working families with low incomes receive the maximum credit. Working families who…

June 18, 2024

Economic Opportunity and Social Mobility

…Australia, Germany, the Netherlands, Norway, Sweden, and Finland. The evidence is ambiguous as to whether America’s absolute mobility looks worse than or the same as that of Denmark and the…

April 9, 2024

The Child Tax Credit: My Long-Read Q&A with Kevin Corinth

…as “middle class tax relief.” That’s not really what it was. It was in the sense that it increased that maximum payment, but you’re right, the fundamental change was that…

March 28, 2024

An Early Look at the Child Tax Credit Changes in the Tax Relief for American Families and Workers Act of 2024

…providing corporate tax relief, the legislation would change the CTC in four ways. First, the maximum CTC benefit would be indexed to inflation. Second, the maximum refundable credit would increase…

March 11, 2024

How Many Forms of “Wage Insurance” Do We Need, Exactly?

…recessions offer additional weeks of checks to the long-term unemployed (that is, generally beyond six months, continuing state UI check amounts). During the last two recessions, maximum durations stretched to…

March 4, 2024

Social conservatives who care about marriage should think twice about a “per-child” refundable Child Tax Credit

…encourage marriage, they should focus on increasing the maximum CTC benefit rather than increasing the CTC’s phase-in for families with multiple children. 72% of single moms work. It is thus…

February 27, 2024

Options for Improving the Child Tax Credit Provisions in H.R. 7024, the Tax Relief for American Families and Workers Act of 2024

…H.R. 7024, we recommend several improvements to its CTC provisions, including provisions to retain and provisions to drop. Provisions to Retain Increase the Maximum CTC to Account for the Rising…

February 7, 2024

Solving Benefit Cliffs in SNAP

…benefit amounts phase out as household earnings increase. Households with no income receive the maximum benefit—$766 per month for a family of three—but for each additional dollar that a household…