House Tax Bill Hits Struggling Families

The House tax plan was introduced last week, proposing deficit raising tax cuts that will primarily benefit corporations and the highest-income households. This deficit will have to be paid for in the long-run, and it will be low and middle-income families who will be footing the bill.

Here are four elements of the House tax bill that make this plan a bad deal for low and middle-class Americans:

• It cuts back on the Child Tax Credit (CTC), a program that primarily helps low wage families with children pay for quality, safe, and affordable childcare. Under proposed changes to the CTC, an estimated 10 million children from low wage families will be left out in the cold. Don’t be fooled by rhetoric that claims this is a middle-class tax cut expansion: households that will benefit from CTC expansion are those that make between $150,000-$300,000 per year but their gain is offset by the loss of full benefits from this tax credit for low wage families.
• This bill repeals the State and Local Income and Sales Tax Deduction (SALT) and caps the property tax deduction that is used by 30% of Washingtonians to reduce their federal taxes. An estimated 800,000 Washingtonians will no longer be able to claim this deduction. The elimination of the SALT deduction may ultimately hurt abilities to raise state revenues, resulting in fewer dollars for Washington to invest in our education system and social service programs.
• Perhaps the biggest pain point from this tax deal might be felt when our nation’s deficit will rise from the proposed tax cuts, providing justification to enact deep cuts to basic needs services including SNAP, Medicaid, Medicare, and education funding that also funds school meals. This tax bill creates the deficit; the Senate budget resolution adopted by the House earlier this month provides the blueprint for the spending cuts that offset those tax cuts.
• Charitable organizations may see decreases in funding as fewer wealthier and upper middle-class households will have incentive to itemize their deductions under this tax plan. The loss of private donations would hurt charitable organizations’ abilities to meet increased need for food assistance and other basic needs services that would result from a loss of safety net programs.

When you add all of this up, the price of tax cuts that are so heavily tilted towards the wealthiest is just too high to pay for low and middle-income Americans. Help protect programs that educate, feed, and house our kids, our seniors, our low-wage workers–speak out against this tax bill today.

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