Policy Matters Ohio: Testimony to the Senate Ways & Means Committee on Senate Bill 35
ITEP Work in ActionThe federal earned income tax credit (EITC) was designed to keep people working, lift families out of poverty, boost their income to help weather financial emergencies, and help offset payroll taxes, which hit low-income families the hardest. The EITC was founded in 1975 under President Gerald Ford and is considered the most powerful anti-poverty program in the nation. Last year, the federal EITC lifted 265,000 Ohio families out of poverty.[1] Nearly 1 million families claimed the federal EITC, bringing in $2.3 billion to our state’s local economies.[2]