A new poll showed the majority of people agree with a proposed bill that could enhance child tax credits for American families.
Polling conducted exclusively for Newsweek by Redfield & Wilton Strategies found that 61 percent of Americans support the $79 billion bipartisan package passed by the House of Representatives earlier this year, which is currently being considered in the Senate. The poll was conducted on March 2 and surveyed 1,500 eligible voters across the country.
The Tax Relief for American Families and Workers Act of 2024 would incrementally raise the refundable portion cap of the child tax credit from $1,800 in 2023 to $2,000 in 2025. It would also remove penalties for larger families.
Read more: The Child Tax Credit: Who Qualifies and How to Claim It
Only 10 percent of those polled said they disagreed with the bill, with 20 percent neither supporting or opposing. An additional 10 percent said they didn't know.
Respondents were also asked whether they would like to see the reintroduction of the enhanced child tax credit brought in during the coronavirus pandemic.
In 2021, the Biden administration introduced the American Rescue Plan, which increased the child tax credit from $2,000 per child to $3,000 per child for kids over the age of six and from $2,000 to $3,600 for children under the age of six, and lifted the age limit from 16 to 17.
Survey participants were asked: "To what extent, if at all, would you support or oppose Congress reinstating the enhanced child tax credit introduced in 2021 that temporarily gave qualifying parents up to $3,600 per child?"
Read more: Tax Prep Checklist 2024: What Do You Need to File Taxes?
The survey found that 26 percent of respondents said they strongly supported the reinstatement of 2021 enhancements, with 54 percent overall saying they agreed with the prospect of qualifying parents being given up to $3,600 per child again.
Those who voted for Democrats in the 2020 election were more likely to back the reinstatement (34 percent) than Republicans (23 percent).
Of those who agreed, 31 percent were Millennials, born between 1981 and 1996, encompassing the average age of women giving birth, which was between 27 and 30, according to the U.S. Census Bureau.
While it was in place, over 36 million families with more than 61 million kids received monthly payments, which totaled more than $93 billion, according to the U.S. Treasury Department. Congress didn't renew the coronavirus era enhancement to the child tax credit in December 2022.
Analysis by the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities (CBPP) found that around 16 million children will benefit from the Tax Relief for American Families and Workers Act in the first year alone, including 3 million children under the age of three.
The CBPP's vice president of federal tax policy, Chuck Marr, previously told Newsweek: "This bipartisan proposal rightly focuses on the roughly 19 million children who today are left out of the full child tax credit because their families' incomes are too low. This proposal would increase the credit for more than 80 percent of these children—about 16 million children—lifting as many as 400,000 children above the poverty line in the first year and making an additional 3 million children less poor."
Uncommon Knowledge
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Newsweek is committed to challenging conventional wisdom and finding connections in the search for common ground.
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Aliss Higham is a Newsweek reporter based in Glasgow, Scotland. Her focus is reporting on issues across the U.S., including ... Read more
