Child tax credit: Here’s what we know from the presidential campaigns

The Harris-Walz ticket and the Trump-Vance ticket are in a bidding war to see who can offer the bigger child tax credit to help American families as the U.S. presidential election draws near.
Vice President Kamala Harris wants to give families with a newborn a $6,000 child tax credit to help with the high initial costs of having a baby and boost the credit for other kids from its current $2,000 each.
On “Face the Nation with Margaret Brennan” this month, vice presidential candidate Sen. JD Vance, R-Ohio, said he’d love to see a child tax credit of $5,000 per child. But CBS News reported that he hasn’t fleshed out the proposal or whether it will be refundable, which means families would receive the credit even if they didn’t earn enough to have paid that much in taxes.
So there are a lot of questions about how the child tax credit might roll out, depending on who wins the election. But here’s what we know about potential proposals so far:
On the program, Vance implied he wouldn’t like income limits on who gets an expanded child tax credit. “You don’t want a different policy for higher income families. You just want to have a pro-family child tax credit,” he said.
In saying he’d like to see the larger credit, Vance added, “But you, of course, have to work with Congress to see how possible and viable that is.”
Without an income cap, the nonpartisan Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget said that would cost $2 trillion to $3 trillion over 10 years.
Vance and former president Donald Trump have both said they’re concerned about low birth rates and want to make it easier for families to afford children. Vance is especially interested in ensuring families can afford to live on one income.
The Harris/Walz proposal is more fleshed out. It would include the $6,000 for families in a baby’s first year, then the expanded tax credit for older kids at $3,600 a child for those ages 2-5, dropping to $3,000 for older children. The proposal is a fully-refundable tax credit, so there are no work or income requirements.
But the Democrats’ proposal would have income limits of $400,000 for a couple or $200,000 for an individual. The nonpartisan Tax Foundation estimates the proposal would cost $1.6 trillion over 10 years.
Harris has said that expanding the child tax credit would be one of her first priorities.
During his term as governor of Minnesota, Walz oversaw creation of a state-level $1,750 child tax credit for eligible families that’s fully refundable and doesn’t limit the number of children.
The current child tax credit is $2,000, after a temporary expansion under the American Rescue Plan Act passed in 2021 during the pandemic raised it as high as $3,600 a child for young children and $3,000 for older children.
The existing tax credit has income caps: $200,000 for single filers and $400,000 for married couples filing jointly.
And to get the credit, parents have to work and earn at least $2,500 a year.
But even the $2,000 is temporary without some congressional action. It’s going to revert back to $1,000 a child in 2026 and the age of a qualified child will drop from 17 to 16. The enhancements were made in the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act passed during the Trump administration in 2018, but will sunset along with other tax cuts at the end of 2025.
Kiplinger reports there are six issues that have been topics of debate when it comes to the child tax credit and what form it might take: