Connecticut Voices for Children: Making Children Visible in Connecticut’s Tax Code
ITEP Work in ActionThis issue brief from the Fiscal Policy Center at Connecticut Voices for Children identifies a feature of the Connecticut tax system that effectively penalizes households with children, relative to households without kids. Across the country, nearly all states that have enacted an income tax have also enacted some form of tax exemption, deduction or credit to offset the costs of raising children. Connecticut has not. As a result, a two-parent family with three children pays virtually the same amount in state income tax as a couple earning the same amount with no children, even though households with children spend far more on food, clothing, health care and other necessities and have far less disposable income. Connecticut Voices for Children proposes a new state child tax credit that would remove the existing child penalty, give an immediate boost to more than 400,000 low- and moderate-income families with children in Connecticut, and improve fairness in our tax code.