Law Commons^™

Earned Income Tax Credit Portability: Respecting The Autonomy Of American Families, Mary Leto Pareja

Faculty Scholarship

The Earned Income Tax Credit (EITC) was a key component of the welfare reform movement that began in the 1970s and expanded in the 1990s. Politicians and the public saw the EITC as a helping hand to working families -- a way to make work pay.' The EITC today is the single largest federal anti-poverty program in the United States. Although the EITC clearly is targeted at families with children, it is not optimally structured to improve child welfare. The current rules limit EITC eligibility to a taxpayer who lives with a child more than six months of the year, …