Policy Brief: On the tax liability red herring currently influencing Congressional debates on the child tax credit
![](https://jainfamilyinstitute.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/03/jainfamilyinstitute-tpc-benefits-income-group-breakdown-2025-alt.png)
As the tax package talks continue to move slowly through Congress, Senate Finance Committee Ranking Member Crapo recently released a statement where he objected that “more than 90 percent of the bill’s CTC benefits accrue to taxpayers who will not owe a single dollar of federal income tax.” Jack Landry’s new report brings a lot of data to contextualize this criticism.
Key Takeaways
- Parents will not owe federal income taxes until they earn over $43,000—in most cases, far higher amounts. Insisting CTC improvements go to families who have federal tax liability would ensure benefits do not reach most low-income families.
- Senator Crapo has suggested that the CTC provisions go more to the working poor rather than families without tax liability, but I estimate 98 percent of children living in poverty have parents who do not owe federal income taxes.
- While most of the CTC changes benefit low-income families, the business tax provisions also included in the legislation benefit more middle-income families. According to the Urban-Brookings Tax Policy Center’s modeling, the legislation as a whole provides more benefits to the 20–80th income percentiles than the 0–20th percentile.