Sen. John Curtis joins proposal to encourage businesses to make child care more affordable
WASHINGTON — A bipartisan group of lawmakers is pushing to make child care more affordable for parents by providing tax credits for businesses that provide options for their employees.
The Child Care Availability and Affordability Act, being introduced in the Senate this week, seeks to update current tax provisions to make child care more affordable while also creating a program to boost the number of child care workers. Sen. John Curtis, R-Utah, has signed on to the bill as a cosponsor, calling the proposal a 'practical, commonsense solution' to support working families.
'It's becoming increasingly difficult to raise a family, due in large part to the high cost of child care. Quite frankly, parents deserve better,' Curtis said in a statement. 'By updating tax credits that help cover child care costs and supporting businesses that provide caregiving benefits, our bill puts money back into the pockets of hardworking parents.'
The bill is being led by Sens. Katie Britt, R-Ala., and Tim Kaine, D-Va.
The bill would bolster the Employer-Provided Child Care Tax Credit to further encourage businesses to provide child care to their employees, particularly small businesses.
The proposal would increase the maximum credit from $150,000 to $500,000 and increase the percentage of covered expenses from 25% to 50%. Those incentives would be larger for small businesses by increasing maximum credit to $600,000 and would allow small businesses to enter into joint applications to pool resources.
The legislation would expand the Child and Dependent Care Tax Credit to make it partially refundable, allowing lower-income families with out-of-pocket child care expenses to benefit from the credit for the first time, according to the legislation. In doing so, the tax credit would expand maximum benefits to $2,500 for families with one child and up to $4,000 for families with multiple children.
The expansion would be the first update to the tax credit program in more than two decades, during which child care costs have risen by more than 200%, according to lawmakers.
The proposal would also strengthen the Dependent Care Assistance Program to allow families to deduct up to $7,500 more in expenses. The DCAP would then be decoupled from the Child and Dependent Care Tax Credit to benefit middle-income families with high child care costs but do not have access to the latter due to income restrictions.
'This commonsense proposal is about more than just addressing our child care crisis — it is a direct investment in the hardworking families and local small businesses striving to achieve their American Dream across our nation,' Britt said in a statement. 'I'm proud of this effort to empower parents, which ultimately opens the door to more opportunities for their children and tackles our nation's urgent workforce needs to help unleash a new era of American prosperity.'
The same legislation has already been introduced in the House, led by Reps. Mike Lawler, R-N.Y., and Salud Carbajal, D-Calif. Similar bills have been introduced in previous Congresses but have not been passed through both chambers to be enacted.
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