The child tax credit is changing. Here’s what it means for your family.

By Chabeli Carrazana for The th A new child tax credit is coming next year bringing important changes that will alter how much assistance families receive and which families can receive it Related Articles Tis the season to look for a seasonal gig Ticker Wall Street coasts to the finish of its latest record-setting week Cyberattack disrupts check-in systems at major European airport Trump to add new K fee for H- B visas in latest crackdown Emerging TikTok deal with China ensures US control of board and algorithm White House says With his tax and spending package President Donald Trump passed a permanent change to the child tax credit spearheaded by congressional Republicans It goes into effect for families filing income tax returns in The changes increase the total amount of the tax credit from to and index it to inflation so it grows over the years a change advocates have championed for years However the package also introduces new parameters to qualify for the credit that will directly affect immigrants and the lowest-income families For the first time children and at least one of their parents or guardians will have to have a Social Guard number to be able to qualify for the child tax credit That means an estimated million American kids who likely qualify for the credit this year will no longer be able to get it as of next year The tax credit was passed in Families have used it to help cover basic demands like food and also wants like getting their children into extracurricular programs But for its nearly -year history the credit has been structured in a way that families with the lowest incomes couldn t get the full amount With the bulk latest change and because the credit phases in depending on income and the number of children you have families have to earn more before they can claim the full amount Democrats had been pushing to change those requirements in contemporary years so that the lowest-income families could get more of the credit but Republicans pushed back saying it disincentivized people to work Under the new child tax credit an estimated million children are now blocked from receiving the full amount compared with million at this moment according to an analysis by the Center on Poverty and Social Framework at Columbia University which has done much of the research and analysis on the child tax credit The share of children from marginalized backgrounds who are not going to be able to receive the full amount has also gone up for each group of American Indian or Alaska Native children from under the current law of Black children from of Latinx children from of children of single mothers from of children in rural parts of the country from Families of all sizes are going to need higher levels of income to be eligible for the full credit amount stated Christopher Yera a research analyst at the Center on Poverty and Social Agenda The child tax credit is being cut at a time when other vital services for low-income Americans are seeing reductions Under the same tax package the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Plan is losing billion in funding through affecting eligibility for free school meals and for families that rely on the assistance to put food on the table Another trillion will be cut from Medicaid and the Children s Soundness Insurance Initiative in the next decade All these families that are going to lose access to basic requirements it would be handy if the folks harmed by that were definitely reached by the child tax credit reported Meredith Dodson the senior director of society strategy for the Coalition on Human Necessities who has been lobbying for an expansion of the credit The th shares a breakdown of how the new child tax credit works and how to access it What is the child tax credit The child tax credit is a return parents and guardians receive in their taxes annually for every child under the age of in their care Stepchildren foster children half siblings and descendants including grandchildren and nieces or nephews may also qualify if the tax filer is their main caretaker Since the preponderance families could claim from the credit is per child and that amount goes down after a certain threshold Guardians who earn very little or nothing have never been able to claim the full amount of the credit except in when it temporarily expanded during the pandemic What is the new child tax credit amount For the tax filing year the child tax credit will increase to Eligible parents will see this amount in their tax returns next year The credit will also be adjusted annually to account for inflation beginning in Who qualifies for the new child tax credit If filing a single return parents and guardians must have a Social Assurance number to access the credit This is a important departure from prior years when only the children but not the adults claiming them had to have a Social Safeguard number For parents and guardians who are filing jointly only one parent has to have a Social Safety number to qualify That means various mixed-status households will be able to qualify for the credit To be able to claim a child the child has to Have lived with the parent or caregiver for at least six months during though there are chosen exceptions Have lived six months or more in the United States Have a Social Precaution number The shift is part of a yearslong effort to limit immigrants access to establishment services Before any child living in the United States was eligible for the child tax credit Then Trump s tax cuts package in changed that rule to require that the child have a Social Prevention number to qualify Their parents could use an Individual Taxpayer Identification Number or ITIN to file their taxes and still be eligible for the credit Now at least one of those parents will also need to have a Social Safeguard number Families headed by an undocumented single parent where the child is an American citizen will not get the child tax credit at all Instead of indeed expanding the child tax credit they took it away from millions of kids Dodson commented There are vital changes in the law but they kind of miss the mark when the whole thing is leaving out the folks who need it the most of Does everyone who qualifies get No Families who earn less than a year do not receive anything After that the credit begins to phase in depending on how much families earn Several families earn little and owe no taxes Those families are eligible for only a portion of the child tax credit up to in That means that even if your tax liability is zero you can still receive a check for up to for the child tax credit Then the credit starts to phase out once families earn too much to qualify for the full amount For single filers the credit starts to decrease for any amount they earn past for joint filers the threshold is Care providers earning more than for a single filer and for joint filers do not receive anything What is the minimum you need to earn to qualify for the full amount According to an analysis by the Center on Poverty and Social Protocol at Columbia University Families with one child A single filer necessities to earn at least joint filers need to earn at least Families with two children A single filer requirements to earn at least joint filers need to earn at least Families with three children A single filer requirements to earn at least joint filers need to earn at least Families with four children A single filer necessities to earn at least joint filers need to earn at least Who doesn t qualify Children who don t have a Social Measure number don t qualify Single parents or guardians who don t have a Social Protection number also don t qualify even if the child does have a Social Safety number An estimated of children will not qualify for the full amount because their parents earn too little That is up from previously according to the analysis by the Center on Poverty and Procedures at Columbia The share of kids who are ineligible because their parents earn too much stays the same at The states with the largest share of children who don t qualify for the full amount are Mississippi Louisiana New Mexico Alabama and Kentucky How do you claim the credit on your taxes Filers must include their children or dependents on Form the Individual Income Tax Return and also complete a Schedule Is this like the child tax credit in No In that credit was expanded to give families up to much of it in the form of monthly checks instead of an annual lump sum The expansion allowed the bulk low-income families in the country those who don t file income taxes to access the child tax credit for the first time in its history Those pandemic-era changes cut the child poverty rate in to a historic low of But the temporary changes lasted only a year and an effort by Democrats to make them permanent failed The tax credit then reverted back to its usual amount and the child poverty rate rose to in Is this a temporary change or a permanent one This is a permanent change Previous child tax credit expansions have been in place for a set number of years and when it was time for those changes to expire lawmakers renegotiated the new parameters That is why the child tax credit came up this year changes put in place in were set to expire in What the new version does differently is make the changes permanent Lawmakers can still tweak the credit if they want to later but there is no set date for when the changes will end and the credit will revert to its former amount This story was produced by The th and reviewed and distributed by Stacker