Child tax credits: California’s winners and losers in new GOP congressional plan
The good news for millions of California parents is that the federal tax credit for children would jump to $2,500 under the new tax bill house Republicans plan to start writing Tuesday.
But there’s also a sobering feature: The parents of an estimated 910,000 California children would lose the credit because their child has at least one undocumented immigrant parent without a Social Security number, according to an analysis by several research groups including Washington’s Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy.
House tax-writers plan to begin crafting a massive tax bill Tuesday and hope to have it ready for a full House vote next week. The Senate would then aim to finish its version in June.
The bill’s chief goal is extending the 2017 tax cuts, which are due to expire at the end of this year, and add some new features, such as ending taxation of Social Security benefits.
One of the expiring provisions involves the federal child tax credit. Currently $2,000 per qualifying child, it would be cut in half if Congress and President Donald Trump don’t act by the end of this year.
Maintaining a meaningful child tax credit has long been one of the rare breaks that routinely win Republican and Democratic support. Vice President JD Vance suggested during last year’s campaign the credit go as high as $5,000. Democrats have pushed for levels of $3,000 and more.
Parents who now qualify for the break can receive up to $2,000 per child credit for children under 17. To be eligible, parents need an adjusted gross income of $400,000 or less if filing jointly or $200,000 or less for other filers. The credit is phased out as incomes go higher.
The amount was as high as $3,600 per child in 2021, during the COVID pandemic. It was seen as helping pull millions of children out of poverty.
Who pays for the tax cuts?
Lawmakers are torn over how to proceed. The 2017 tax cuts were arguably the most important initiative of President Donald Trump’s first term, and he is strongly backing their extension.
But Congress is also under strong pressure to avoid dramatically increasing the national debt, and members are having trouble figuring out how to pay for the tax extensions, let alone any new features.
If current child tax credit law is continued, it would cost $744.6 billion over 10 years according to an estimate by Congress’ Joint Committee on Taxation. Increasing the credit by $500 per child would cost another $89.3 billion over that period.
A new Social Security number requirement would reduce that cost by an estimated $39.2 billion over 10 years, the committee figured.
Social Security numbers are available to U.S. citizens and some non-citizens. A child qualifying for the credit must have a Social Security number, but the parent does not. The GOP proposal would require the parent to have that number.
That would mean an estimated 4.5 million children, or 910,000 in California, would not be able to claim the credit, according to a study by ITEP and others.
“These proposals, while supposedly targeted at undocumented immigrants, ultimately harm citizen children,” said Emma Sifre and Joe Hughes of ITEP in their analysis.
The biggest beneficiaries of the Republican plan would be middle- and higher-income families, according to an analysis from the nonpartisan Tax Policy Center.
It found that the lowest-income beneficiaries would get an increase of roughly $350 from the expanded credit, while higher-income families would get $700 to $800.
This story was originally published May 13, 2025 at 5:00 AM with the headline "Child tax credits: California’s winners and losers in new GOP congressional plan."
.jpg)