Why should the CTC be available to families with little or no income tax liability?
The CTC is the principal federal strategy for providing income assistance to families with children, helping them to afford the costs of child rearing. Low-income children should not be excluded from benefits. Their families are equally, if not more so, in need of such assistance. In addition to having less money with which to raise their children, they often pay a higher cost for being poor. The same consumer products and financial services purchased by middle- and high-income families tend to have a higher price tag for low-income families. How would making the CTC fully refundable affect poverty? The Urban Institute found that making the CTC fully refundable would reduce poverty by 9.2 percent and deep poverty by 11.5 percent. This equates to 3.3 million people, including 2.1 million children. Their findings further indicated that, combined with increasing the minimum wage, expanding the Earned Income Tax Credit, and increasing child care assistance, making the CTC fully refundable
