He is advocating tripling the tax deduction, not any tax credit. This policy does nothing to encourage low income families to have more children. It is mainly those families paying a lot of tax who would receive the benefit.
It is key to understand the difference between a credit and a deduction.
It is key to understand the difference between a credit and a deduction.”
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Apparently you didn't understand how the scam I linked to works.
Let me do my best to illustrate it for you: A person who has extra child dependents (more than the allowable maximum number) SELLS those child deductions for those extra dependents (by providing the child's name and SS#) at a discounted rate to another person who doesn't have children. This enables them both to claim child dependents as well as qualify for the Earned Income Tax Credit.
By proposing to triple the value of each deduction Santorum has enabled the person selling their “extra” dependent deductions to demand a higher price thus increasing their profits. This still allows the recipient of the “extra” deductions to make a decent profit off both the fraudulent deductions and the fraudulent EITC. The cost of all this is borne by the taxpayers.
I will assume you know what the EITC is and how it works; if not it's easy to “Google” it or check out the IRS website.
Take care,
-Geoff
Why wouldn’t it encourage low-income families to have more children? Maybe not the lowest income who don’t pay taxes, but there may be people at the low end of the tax-paying scale who can cut much or all of their tax burden with the additional child credit. It would then be debatable whether those families would qualify for other public assistance to support those children.