San Francisco Chronicle - (Sunday)
Loss of child tax credit hits families hard
For the first time in half a year, families on Friday were going without a monthly deposit from the child tax credit — a program that was intended to be part of President Biden’s legacy but has emerged instead as a flash point over who is worthy of government support.
Retiree Andy Roberts, from St. Albans, W.Va., relied on the checks to help raise his two young grandchildren, whom he and his wife adopted because the birth parents are recovering from drug addiction. They are now out $550 a month. The money helped pay for Girl Scouts, ballet and acting lessons and kids’ shoes. The tax credit, he said, was a “godsend.”
“It’ll make you tighten up your belt, if you’ve got anything to tighten,” Roberts said about losing the payments.
The monthly tax credits were part of Biden’s $1.9 trillion coronavirus relief package — and the president had proposed extending them for another full year as part of a separate measure focused on economic and social programs.
But Democratic Sen. Joe Manchin, from Roberts’ home state of West Virginia, objected to extending the credit out of concern that the money
Parents and other supporters of the child tax credit gather in September outside the office of Sen. Maggie Hassan, D-N.H., in Manchester to demand that the federal benefit be made permanent.
would discourage people from working and that any additional federal spending would fuel inflation that has already climbed to a nearly 40-year high.
According to IRS data, 305,000 West Virginia children benefited from the expanded credit last month.
Manchin’s opposition
in the evenly split Senate derailed Biden’s social spending package and caused the expanded tax credits that were going out in the middle of every month to expire in January. This is whittling down family incomes at the precise moment when people are grappling with higher prices.
However, families only received half of their 2021 credit on a monthly basis and the other half will be received once they file their taxes in the coming months. The size of the credit will be cut in 2022, with full payments only going to families that earned enough income to owe taxes, a
policy choice that will limit the benefits for the poorest households. And the credits for 2022 will come only once people file their taxes at the start of the following year.