Care Income Now! Tax Credits for Mothers and other Caregivers – Not Tax Breaks for Billionaires

⏰Action Alert⏰ Tell Congress families need support: Pass the American Family Act and the Worker Relief and Credit Reform Act

Mothers and other family caregivers, including those of us who are immigrants, work hard, and our unpaid work contributes $873.50 billion a year to the economy, yet we are denied support and our families are penalized.  We need a permanently expanded child tax credit (CTC) and an expanded Earned Income Tax Credit (EITC) that recognize and value our work.

The expanded CTC legislation—HR 2763, introduced by Rep DeLauro in the House, and S 1393, introduced by Senator Bennet in the Senate, would cover all children, including children in immigrant families. This is particularly crucial considering that the administration is proposing to remove benefits from most immigrant families. Those who received the expanded CTC said, “I could get the children what they need.”  “I stopped going into debt.” An expanded EITC Worker Relief and Credit Reform Act (HR 2338), reintroduced by Rep. Gwen Moore in the House, would modernize the EITC and redefine work to include mothers and other unpaid family caregivers and students in higher education.

Take Action! What You Can Do:

Contact your US Senators and Representatives. Tell them families need a care income and here is what they can do: co-sponsor the new American Family Act, re-introduced in the Senate (S.1393) and the House (HR 2763), and the Worker Relief and Credit Reform Act (HR 2338), if they haven’t already, and work for the passage of these bills. Let them know why these bills are important to you and what they would mean to your family. Call the U.S. Capitol Switchboard at (202) 224-3121 and ask to be connected to your Senators’ or Representative’s offices.

Tell them that as mothers and other unpaid family caregivers we appeal to lawmakers: Do not throw us and our children under the bus! Value and support our caregiving work and the well-being of our children! We don’t need work requirements; we are already working! And all our children must be included!

BACKGROUND CTC & EITC

After Congress allowed the American Family Act to lapse, a new version was re-introduced in the Senate (S.1393) and the House (HR 2763) in April, which would make permanent an expanded, monthly Child Tax Credit and increase it to $4320 per year for each child 6 and under, and $3600 for each child over 6. It includes $6360 for families with newborns, would be delivered monthly, be fully refundable—available to all regardless of whether any taxes are owed— include children under 18 who are citizens or have permanent resident status and be indexed for inflation. The pandemic-era CTC lifted 6 million children out of poverty and helped to cut child poverty by almost 50%. Families used these tax credits to feed their families—$75 out of every CTC $100 was spent on food. However, rather than extend this expanded CTC they instead passed a reduced CTC which is only $2200 per child, excludes 19.3 million children whose parents don’t make enough to qualify, and another 4 million children because they or their parents lack a social security or ITIN number.

The Worker Relief and Credit Reform Act (WRCR) (HR 2338) would expand and modernize the Earned Income Tax Credit, one of the most effective anti-poverty programs in the US, recipients use it to meet their basic needs, such as food and housing. The WRCR Act recognizes unpaid family caregivers and higher-education students as workers. The WRCR Act benefits nearly half of all people in the US (estimated at 161 million by ITEP in 2019) and cuts the poverty rate by one-third. It increases the maximum credit for most people to $4,000 for single filers and $8,000 for married filers and allows for monthly payments. It expands the eligible age range for those without children from 25 to 18; and those over 65 would now be eligible. It would not impact other benefits, such as TANF, SNAP, SSI, CTC, Social Security, housing or other Federal, State benefits. 

See Cosponsors thus far of the American Family Act in the House of Representatives and in the Senate.

See Cosponsors thus far of the Worker Relief and Credit Reform Act in the House of Representatives.

Action Alert issued by: Care Income Now! Every Mother is a Working Mother Network, Global Women’s Strike, Payday Men’s Network, Women of Color/GWS, Welfare Warriors. With the support of family caregivers from urban and rural areas: Altoona, PA; Berkeley, CA; Baltimore, MD; Fort Collins, CO; Gardena, CA; Los Angeles, CA; Milwaukee, WI; Oakland CA; Philadelphia, PA; Reading PA; Redondo Beach, CA; San Francisco, CA; Twentynine Palms, CA

Contact: careincomenow@globalwomenstrike.net
215-848-1120 Philly | 323-276-9833 Los Angeles | 415-626-4114 SF Bay Area

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Mothers and other unpaid family caregivers do essential work and deserve cash support.

• The report, “American’s Unseen Workforce” found that 44.58 million unpaid family caregivers in the US perform the equivalent of $873.5 billion worth of unpaid labor each year. If family caregiving were a business entity, it would be the largest revenue-generating business in the world!
  
• When it comes to family benefits, the US is second to last among 38 countries.
  
• A new global study says financial insecurity is the reason families don’t have more children.
  
• Mandating work requirements to get benefits are an insult to mothers. If mothers in the US were paid for their work in the home including taking care of their children, they would have earned an annual salary of $145,235 over the past year.
  
• Because of the expanded CTC in the American Rescue Plan of 2021, child poverty fell 46%, to 5.2%, the lowest rate on record.
  
• 13.7% of children in the US live in poverty, an increase of 1.3% in the last year.
  
• The CTC is popular with voters: 77% of Republicans, 94% of Democrats, and 77% of Independents say it is important to reinstate the expanded CTC.
  
• 40% of us don’t have the cash to cover a $1000 emergency expense.
  
• An estimated 13.5% of US households were food insecure (USDA 2023). Now with the new cuts to SNAP that number will skyrocket.
  
• An estimated 91 million people, 35% of people in the US, reported that they could not afford access to quality healthcare if they needed it today, with Black and Hispanic Americans at 46% and 52% respectively (West Health-Gallup Healthcare Affordability Index). Being unable to get good healthcare, if it doesn’t kill us, leaves us sicker for a longer period of time and increases the workload of family caregivers, predominantly women.
  
• Among unpaid family caregivers, 64%, experience high emotional stress and 45% experience physical strain.
  
• US mothers reported that that their mental health decreased by 12.4% from 2016 to 2023 and this decrease was significantly higher among single mothers.