"The U.S. tax code is the single largest way the government supports wealth and asset building. However, a  disproportionate share of federal tax benefits is funneled to  wealthy, White households that own homes and businesses and have savings and investment accounts. The Working Families Tax Relief Act (WFTRA), introduced by Senators Sherrod Brown (OH), Michael Bennet (CO), Dick Durbin (IL), and Ron Wyden (OR), strengthens the  Earned Income Tax Credit (EITC) and  Child Tax Credit (CTC), recognizing the importance of tax policy in promoting economic mobility. If enacted, the Act's changes would raise the incomes of  46 million households.    

The EITC is a refundable tax credit for low- and moderate-income earners that provides income and supports work. The CTC is a partially refundable tax credit that helps working families with the cost of raising children and is worth up to $2,000 per eligible child (under age 17). The EITC and CTC have positive effects on health, asset building and savings, and educational achievement in children. For instance, credits as little as $1,000  have been shown to improve children's test scores and increase the likelihood of those children attending college and earning high wages as adults. 

In conjunction with the CTC, the EITC lifted  8.9 million Americans out of poverty in 2017-including 4.8 million children-and reduced the depth of poverty for an additional 7.7 million people. Nevertheless, one of the EITC's biggest flaws is the paltry credit it provides to adults who are not raising children, which is too small to offset childless workers' tax liability. As a result, the tax code essentially taxes some of these workers into poverty-even after they receive the EITC. The WFTRA addresses this concern by expanding the EITC for childless workers by raising the maximum credit from $529 to $2,074 and expanding the age range from age 25-64 to 19-67...."