H.R.3157: Working Families Tax Relief Act of 2019

Talking Points

• Based on an analysis of Census data, the proposal, known as the Working Families Tax Relief Act, would improve the economic well-being of 46 million low- and moderate-income households with 114 million people.
• A significant body of research indicates that the EITC and CTC increase employment, reduce poverty, and improve children’s life prospects. The proposal’s EITC and CTC expansions — combined with overdue legislation to raise the minimum wage, provide paid family and medical leave, and other such policies — would help address the long-term wage stagnation that has affected households from all racial and ethnic backgrounds that earn low or modest wages.
• The legislation would expand the EITC by roughly 25 percent for families with children. It also would substantially strengthen the very small EITC for workers who aren’t raising children in their homes — the sole group that the federal tax code now taxes into, or deeper into, poverty. The bill’s EITC expansions would, by themselves, benefit an estimated 35 million households with 75 million people.
• The bill also would make the CTC fully refundable so children in lower-income households, including those with little or no income, could benefit fully from it. Today, the CTC provides little or no help to millions of children and families with low incomes — the people who need it most.
• The bill’s CTC changes would benefit an estimated 43 million children, lifting more than 10 million of them above or closer to the poverty line. Its impact on deep poverty among children — that is, on children who live below half of the poverty line — would be dramatic.
• Taking its EITC and CTC expansions together, the bill would boost the incomes of an estimated 24 million white families, nine million Latino families, eight million Black families, and two million Asian American families. It would lift 29 million people above or closer to the poverty line, including 11 million children.[1] The child poverty rate would fall from 15 percent to 11 percent (a 28 percent decline), using the Supplemental Poverty Measure (or SPM, which most analysts view as more accurate than the official poverty measure and which counts refundable tax credits as income). The overall SPM poverty rate would decline from 14 percent to 12 percent.
• Source: https://www.cbpp.org/research/federal-tax/working-families-tax-relief-act-would-raise-incomes-of-46-million-households