Advocates were deeply disappointed that a tax package added on to the FY20 spending deal did not include provisions to help low-income families. Advocates had been pushing members of Congress to include improvements to the Earned Income Tax Credit (EITC) and the Child Tax Credit (CTC) to any tax package that passed this year. Instead, Congress added legislation to the FY20 spending package to continue expired or soon-to-expire tax provisions largely benefiting businesses, and known as “tax extenders.” The spending deal also repealed three key taxes included in the 2010 Affordable Care Act: the so-called “Cadillac” tax on high-cost insurance plans, a tax on medical device manufacturers, and a tax on health insurers. In total, the tax package will cost $426 billion over 10 years, according to Americans for Tax Fairness. As CHN said in a statement, “The most basic fairness requires that if billions in extended or new tax reductions for businesses are included, the poorest children and workers should not be left out. But they were.”

The tax package did not include “technical corrections” to the 2017 Tax Cuts and Jobs Act that some businesses had been pushing for. This gives advocates hope that a deal on these corrections and improvements to the EITC and CTC can be reached in early 2020.

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