Center on Budget & Policy Priorities Report: 'Temporarily Expanding Child Tax Credit and Earned Income Tax Credit Would Deliver Effective Stimulus'
The report was co-authored by
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The COVID-19 pandemic has triggered a severe economic crisis whose fallout will likely persist for some time. The
Federal policymakers should enact stronger policies now to avoid a steep poverty spike, help people meet basic needs, and boost the economy. Alongside strengthened state fiscal relief, nutrition assistance, unemployment insurance, and Medicaid funding, the next fiscal stimulus package should include specific expansions for tax year 2020 of the Child Tax Credit and Earned Income Tax Credit (EITC) that would deliver well-timed, high bang-for-the-buck economic stimulus to millions of low-income households when they file their taxes in early 2021.
Specifically, the next fiscal stimulus package should make the Child Tax Credit of
Similarly, before the pandemic, a
Making the Child Tax Credit fully available would lift more than 3 million people -- including 2 million children -- above the poverty line. It would lift another 13.6 million poor people, including 6.8 million children, closer to the poverty line. And for more than 1 million of these people, including 770,000 children, the expansion would lift them out of deep poverty by raising their income above half of the poverty line.[3] By increasing the purchasing power of very poor families, this also would be highly effective economic stimulus, since these hard-pressed families will spend virtually all of any additional income they receive.
In addition to making the Child Tax Credit fully available, the Heroes Act would increase the value of the credit from
The next legislative package also should increase for tax year 2020 the miniscule EITC for low-wage adults who aren't raising children. This, too, would boost the economy, and it would help millions of people while encouraging and rewarding work. The federal tax code currently taxes about 5.8 million low-wage workers aged 19-65 into or deeper into poverty, because the payroll and (in some cases) federal income taxes they pay exceed any EITC they receive.[5] An obvious way to help avoid a bigger spike in poverty is to stop taxing people into poverty. The EITC expansion for these workers in the Heroes Act would benefit 15.4 million working childless adults and reduce the number of them whom the federal tax code taxes into, or deeper into, poverty by 96 percent.[6] That proposal would raise the maximum EITC for childless adults from roughly
Of note, the top occupations that would benefit from these Child Tax Credit and EITC expansions include home health aides, cashiers, and food preparation and serving occupations. One silver lining of this pandemic has been Americans' growing appreciation of the essential role these workers and millions of others who work for low pay -- and often lack benefits that many other workers take for granted, such as paid sick days -- play in keeping this economy running. They deserve better, and the policies outlined here would provide concrete, meaningful help. Consider two examples:
* A convenience store cashier works 35 hours a week and earns just above the federal minimum wage of
* A mother with a 2-year-old daughter and 7-year-old son works part time as a cleaner at an assisted living complex, earning
Finally, policymakers also should make a one-time change in the EITC's and Child Tax Credit's[7] designs to make them more effective now as counter-cyclical measures. When the economy weakens, many single-earner families, including single mothers with children, who lose their jobs or a portion of their work hours -- and hence lose earnings -- face an additional hit because they lose part or all of their EITC and Child Tax Credit as well. To address this problem, policymakers should allow filers to use their income from either 2019 or 2020 when calculating their 2020 EITC. And if policymakers do not make the Child Tax Credit fully available to children in low-income families irrespective of the level of their parents' earnings, families should have the same option with respect to the low-income component of the Child Tax Credit. Policymakers have provided this "look-back" option in the past for families affected by various hurricanes and natural disasters. For instance, anyone who lived in a presidentially declared disaster zone during tax year 2018, 2019, or early 2020 could use either their current or previous year's income to file for their EITC and Child Tax Credit.[8]
A recent bipartisan, bicameral look-back proposal would enable people whose income falls in 2020 to use their higher 2019 income to avoid a cut in their EITC and Child Tax Credit.[9] During this pandemic, which the President declared a national emergency, the provision should be available to anyone who otherwise qualifies for the credit. (The look-back provision would raise somewhat our estimates of the numbers of people helped through these proposals.) The CARES Act included a similar provision for businesses, which allows them to deduct interest expenses equal to up to 50 percent of their adjusted taxable income and lets them use their 2019 income to make this calculation. Businesses that experienced lower income in 2020 can use their higher 2019 income and, as a result, deduct more interest and gain a larger tax benefit. Policymakers should extend the same type of look-back provision to hard-working families.
CBO Expects Economy to Remain Weak Through 2021
CBO's latest economic and budget projections show that the unemployment rate will remain above 10 percent through the end of the year and that it won't return to the levels in CBO's pre-pandemic (
This deep economic weakness means that additional and aggressive fiscal policy measures will be needed, and for an extended period of time, to strengthen demand in the economy.
CBO Finds Expanding EITC and Child Tax Credit Provides Effective Stimulus
Expansions of the Child Tax Credit and the EITC represent effective policies to help stimulate a weak economy. They deliver high bank-for-the-buck stimulus because the money flows to lower-income people, who tend to spend rather than save what modest income they have in order to meet basic needs.
During the Great Recession, the 2009 Recovery Act's expansions of these and similar tax credits generated between
This comparison is particularly relevant today. The CARES Act includes an expensing provision for retailers and restaurants but not EITC and Child Tax Credit expansions despite the fact that such expansions would provide higher bang-for-the-buck economic stimulus.[15] Moreover, the
Making the Child Tax Credit Fully Available
Approximately 27 million children in low-income families do not receive the full
Consider a mother with a 2-year-old daughter and 7-year-old son who works part time in a convenience store, earning
Some momentum is building in
The current pandemic and the associated economic downturn make enacting such a proposal more urgent. Policymakers should do what they can to reduce the likelihood of a sharp spike in child poverty, which could undermine the future promise of a generation of children. As a
Substantially reducing child poverty can hence provide long-term benefits for both children and society by lowering future medical spending and other poverty-related costs and increasing children's earnings and contributions to the economy in adulthood, the NAS panel observed. One of the panel's two proposals to cut child poverty in half had a "child allowance" as its centerpiece. A fully available Child Tax Credit is a form of such an allowance.[20]
Making the full
* Lift more than 3 million people -- including 2 million children -- above the poverty line;
* Reduce the child poverty rate by about one-fifth, from 13.7 percent to 10.9 percent;
* Lift 13.6 million poor people, including 6.8 million children, closer to the poverty line; and
* Lift more than 1 million people, including 770,000 children, out of deeppoverty by raising their income above half of the poverty line. Making the Child Tax Credit fully available to children in low-income families would shrink the deep child poverty rate by almost a third.
A fully available Child Tax Credit would lift out of poverty 1 million Black, 1 million Latino, 850,000 non-Hispanic white, 120,000 Asian and Pacific Islander, and 70,000 Native American individuals, including children. It would be particularly beneficial for children of color; it would lift an estimated 710,000 Black children, 700,000 Latino children, 60,000 Asian and Pacific Islander children, and 41,000 Native American children out of poverty, and lift millions more children closer to the poverty line. The impacts on deep poverty would be even larger for Black and Latino children than for non-Hispanic white children.
The families that would benefit from this measure (see Table 1) perform important work, often for low pay and few benefits. The current crisis has made it clear how essential their work is.
Providing a Stronger EITC for Low-Wage Childless Adults
The EITC is a pro-work success story: numerous studies have found that it encourages work, boosts incomes, and reduces poverty among families with children. Low-income adults not raising children, however, largely or entirely miss out on these benefits because their EITC is small or nonexistent.
This is an especially appropriate time to address that design flaw, given the examples we see every day of people doing essential jobs during the pandemic despite low pay -- preparing food, providing in-home health services, and handling, packaging, or transporting goods, among other services. Expanding the EITC for childless adults would supplement the limited earnings of several million of these cashiers, home health aides, delivery people, and other people working in essential occupations. (See Table 2.)
Moreover, policymakers need to take strong action to prevent the current sharp economic decline from causing poverty to spike dramatically, and one way to help do that would be to stop taxing people into -- or deeper into -- poverty. Currently, about 5.8 million workers aged 19-65 who are not raising children are taxed into or deeper into poverty each year because their EITC is too small to offset their federal income and payroll taxes.[21]
To address this problem and help avoid a poverty spike among this group, policymakers can, for tax year 2020, adopt a provision of the Heroes Act that would raise the maximum EITC for childless adults from roughly
19-24 who aren't full-time students, as well as workers aged 65 or 66,[22]eligible for the first time. The provision would benefit 15.4 million working childless adults across the country, ranging from 31,000 in
Consider, for example, a 25-year-old single woman who works roughly 35 hours a week throughout the year as a cashier at a convenience store and earns just above the federal minimum wage of
* Some
* On the income tax side, she can claim a
* Thus, her combined federal income and payroll liability (before the EITC) is
In other words, federal taxes push this woman making poverty-level wages about
Improving the Tax Credits' Effectiveness in the Recession
Policymakers also should consider tweaking the EITC's design on a temporary basis to make it a more effective counter-cyclical program during the current downturn. When the economy weakens, many two-earner families lose income and newly qualify for the EITC, which helps stabilize their income and avoid an even larger drop in household consumption. For single-earning families, including single mothers with children, in contrast, "the EITC acts as an income de-stabilizer" (emphasis added)[23] during recessions, because job losses or other earnings reductions cause many of these mothers to lose part or all of their EITC. [24]
To address this problem, policymakers should incorporate the look-back proposal that allows filers to use their income from either 2019 or 2020 when calculating their 2020 EITC, which would cost a modest
People whose incomes fall this year, making them newly eligible for the EITC during the downturn, could use their 2020 income, as under current law. But lower-income workers who lose a job or have their hours and earnings cut could use their 2019 income to avoid losing some or all of their EITC.
Consider two examples:
* A family of four whose income falls from
* But a single mother with two children whose earnings fall from
Providing this choice would be sound fiscal policy and provide important income insurance to families hurt by this deep downturn by ensuring that people don't receive a smaller credit if their earnings fall in the current year due to the disaster. And there is strong precedent for such a provision. Last year policymakers enacted the Taxpayer Certainty and Disaster Relief Tax Act of 2019, which allowed people who lived in presidentially declared disaster zones in tax years 2018, 2019, or early 2020 to use their current or previous year's income to calculate their EITC and Child Tax Credit.[25] Policymakers first extended the look-back provision to survivors of hurricanes Katrina, Rita, and Wilma in 2005, and have used it as a response to many disasters since then.[26] While the pandemic isn't a typical natural disaster, its impacts are similar, and in some cases more severe; people should have access to the same look-back provision for tax year 2020.
More recently, the CARES Act created an analogous relief mechanism for businesses. It not only allows businesses to deduct interest expenses equal to up to 50 percent of their adjusted taxable income (versus 30 percent previously) but also gives them the option of using their 2019 income to make this calculation. Because of the recession, many businesses will have much smaller taxable incomes in 2020 than 2019, so using their larger 2019 income will let them deduct more in interest expenses and therefore obtain larger tax refunds. Policymakers should now extend this kind of option to hard-pressed working families as well.
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End Notes
[1]
[2]
[3] Our poverty-reduction impacts are based on the
[4]
[5] CBPP estimates based on the
[6] The number of working childless adults benefitting would be even higher when accounting for 18-year-old former foster youth and youth experiencing homelessness, whom the Heroes Act makes eligible.
[7] This proposal would be unnecessary for the Child Tax Credit if it is made fully available, as proposed here.
[8] The look-back provision was available to eligible people between
[9] "COVID-19 Earned Income Act," co-sponsored in the House (H.R. 6762) by Democratic Rep.
[10]
[11] CBPP analysis of CBO data.
[12]
[13]
[14] "Estimated Impact of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act on Employment and Economic Output From
[15]
[16]
[17] American Family Act, H.R. 1560/S. 690, https://www.congress.gov/bill/116th-congress/senate-bill/690/text, and the Working Families Tax Relief Act, S. 1138/H.R. 3157,https://www.congress.gov/bill/116th-congress/senate-bill/1138/text.
[18] Senator
[19]
[20] The NAS "Universal Supports and Work Package" was estimated to cut child poverty in half and included a
[21] This estimate excludes full-time students aged 19-23, who under current law can be claimed by their parents as qualifying children for the larger EITC for families with children.
[22] We recommend raising the maximum eligibility age to 66 so the EITC is available until workers reach
[23]
[24] Bitler, Hoynes, and Kuka, p. 25.
[25] Further Consolidated Appropriations Act, 2020, P.L. 116-94, 133 STAT. 3244.
[26] Congressional Research Services, "Tax Policy and Disaster Recovery,"
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