Karen Thurman: “I would say that it is kind of interesting to listen to some prior speakers who talked about the poor and who would get…”

“I would say that it is kind of interesting to listen to some prior speakers who talked about the poor and who would get this. First, no single mother with an income more than $20,000 is going to be eligible because, by the way, $20,000 is the statutory income cutoff for noncouples. Second, no single mother with less than a $20,000 income will benefit if she has significant child care expenses. The reason is that for every potential dollar of tax cut from a new K through 12 education deduction, she loses a dollar of benefit under the dependent care tax credit. The credit is nonrefundable so the usable credit is limited to the amount of tax liability prior to the credit if the liability is already as low as the credit or lower, which is the case for such a single mother; then reducing her tax liability with a new deduction just reduces the credit. There is no net gain. I might point out that after reading all of this, one of the things I think the American people are very concerned about is how we make our Tax Code less complicated rather than more complicated, and this certainly is causing us to have more complication and for people to even have the ability to use this.”