The emergency relief plan that President-elect Biden announced yesterday would expand the Earned Income Tax Credit (EITC) for over 17 million adults not raising children at home who work hard at important, but low-paid, jobs. http://bit.ly/3nRgU2G 

Some 5.8 childless adults aged 19-65 — including 1.5 million Latino and over 1 million Black childless adults — are taxed into or deeper into poverty partly because their EITC is so meager.

Consider a 25-year-old single woman who works roughly 30 hours a week as a cashier at a convenience store and makes about $9 an hour. Her annual earnings of $13,700 are just above the poverty line of $13,621 for a single person.

Partly because today her EITC is so small, federal taxes push her about $940 below the poverty line. Under the President-elect’s plan, her EITC would grow to $1,145, raising her income after federal income and payroll taxes to $46 above the poverty line.

The President-elect’s plan would raise the maximum EITC for childless adults from roughly $530 to roughly $1,500 and raise the income limit to qualify for the childless workers’ EITC from about $16,000 to at least $21,000.

It also would expand the age range of childless workers eligible for the tax credit to include younger adults aged 19-24 who aren’t full-time students, as well as people 65 and over.

The Biden-Harris proposal would benefit 17.4 million working childless adults across the country, including 4.0 million Latino, 3.0 million Black, and 746,000 Asian American childless workers.

The top occupations that would benefit from the Biden EITC expansion include cashiers, food preparers and servers, and home health aides.

The pandemic has helped the nation better understand & appreciate the role these working people who work for low pay play in running the economy. They deserve better including a meaningful EITC and that is what the President-elect’s proposal would provide.