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I am always in favor of raising the child tax credit, which benefits higher earners and has a mechanism for folks who don't pay net taxes to receive a check. F

by ishjoh 5y ago

I am always in favor of raising the child tax credit, which benefits higher earners and has a mechanism for folks who don't pay net taxes to receive a check. For tax year 2021 the credit will be $3,600 for children under 6. Someone making > $100k would definitely benefit from this being raised and I think it's one of the few areas in the US that the left and right generally agree. I would love to see this raised to $5k or higher. Now on the other side of the coin, expenses. Some expenses grow linearly with each child. College education funds, pre-school, diapers. Most expenses, however, don't grow much or at all. With a 1st child everything needs to be bought. Car seat, crib, changing table, clothes, toys, etc. The good news is though, if you plan on having multiple children, the 2nd child can reuse most of those same items. I am a younger sibling, and constantly got hand-me-downs from my older brother, and sometimes I wasn't too happy about that, but as a parent it is crystal clear to my why my parents did that, and they did buy me enough new things that I never had any resentment over it. Now 2 to 3 has been a lot more expensive for us since we had to buy a bigger car to fit 3 car seats, but we're expecting everything else to be reused.

curryst 5y ago
> Someone making > $100k would definitely benefit from this being raised and I think it's one of the few areas in the US that the left and right generally agree. I would love to see this raised to $5k or higher. That money has to come from somewhere. Given that a $100k salary is above the median, I would be unsurprised if you end up paying somewhere close to $5k in taxes to get your $5k benefit. It goes down a little bit because not everyone has kids and they subsidize you, and then up a little bit so you can subsidize people who don't earn enough to have contributed $5k. That's the problem with trying to subsidize things for the higher end of the earning spectrum. Those subsidies have to come from somewhere; either the even higher earning side of the spectrum, or the poorer side of the spectrum. We might recoup those costs in time through a more productive economy, but someone has to pay today for the benefits later.

by ishjoh 5y ago

curryst 5y ago

> Someone making > $100k would definitely benefit from this being raised and I think it's one of the few areas in the US that the left and right generally agree. I would love to see this raised to $5k or higher. That money has to come from somewhere. Given that a $100k salary is above the median, I would be unsurprised if you end up paying somewhere close to $5k in taxes to get your $5k benefit. It goes down a little bit because not everyone has kids and they subsidize you, and then up a little bit so you can subsidize people who don't earn enough to have contributed $5k. That's the problem with trying to subsidize things for the higher end of the earning spectrum. Those subsidies have to come from somewhere; either the even higher earning side of the spectrum, or the poorer side of the spectrum. We might recoup those costs in time through a more productive economy, but someone has to pay today for the benefits later.