Some Parents Would Pay Higher Taxes

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Some Parents Would Pay Higher Taxes

Special Report - February 11, 2010
President Obama is proposing an increased tax benefit for families without a stay-at-home parent while ignoring expiring tax relief for all families that will result in American families paying $280 billion in higher taxes in 2011, when the Child Tax Credit expires at the end of 2010. His recently proposed budget includes an increase in the Child and Dependent Care Tax Credit, which provides a benefit to those families where both parents work outside the home, without providing any benefit for families that make an effort to keep one parent at home to care for the children. This tax credit would be available for families that make less than $115,000 per year and have no parent at home caring for the children because they both work, or are in school or the only parent in the household works.

In contrast, tax relief for families that passed in 2001 and 2003 is set to expire at the end of 2010. The average increase, should Congress fail to extend these tax cuts, will be $1,800 per taxpayer, $3,007 per married couple, and $2,300 for a family of four living on $40,000 per year.

The Family Research Council is sponsoring a petition and calling for the Child Tax Credit to be made permanent before it expires, and to be increased to $5,000 per child, so that families can “decide how to spend the money they earn—money that might even convince a parent to stay at home to care for their kids, which is the optimal environment for any child.” Currently, parents making between $3,000 and $110,000 may qualify for up to a $1,000 tax credit per dependant child under age 17 that still lives in their home.

“Most experts agree that the best environment for any child is a home where one parent stays home to raise the child,” according to the petition. “In this economy that scenario becomes harder and harder to achieve. The choice to either raise a child at home or hire others to assume this responsibility is a decision for parents, and not one for the federal government.”