Well said. I'm the sole wage-earner in a family soon to be of six. My wife is due with baby #4 next March. Our first child was born in 2009 and we've enjoyed, no, counted on, that refundable child tax credit ever since then. Take it away and it's going to feel like a reduction in my family's income.
I don't care what anyone here says, I'm not going to be happy about it.
Do we want to encourage married American couples to have more kids or do we want to import them?
Trust me, I have NO ISSUE with the child tax credit and agree with your rationale. My point was the refundability part. If it were the credit in general, I would have said “breeding” instead of “breathing”.
But I do know that there are many flat-taxers here who would love to see all incentives for having kids done away with...if you want to have kids, then it’s your problem. The fact that our birthrate, already too low, would be cut in half if we did that, simply cruises over their heads.
As to being refundable, I’d simply rather the incentive for having kids be favored towards net taxpayers, as I think they make more responsible parents.