Child tax credit 2021: Here’s how much money N.J. families will get this month – NJ.com

The first monthly checks of the expanded Child Tax Credit have been sent, and $373 million is going to New Jersey families with children.

More than 1.5 million children in the state are in families receiving the monthly payments of $300 for children up to age 6 or $250 for children ages 6-17, according to figures released by the U.S. Treasury Department. Families will receive the money automatically deposited in their bank accounts or by check from the Internal Revenue Service.

The money is part of President Joe Biden’s $1.9 trillion coronavirus stimulus law, passed over unanimous Republican opposition.

“Millions of children and families in New Jersey are going to see a benefit,” said U.S. Sen. Cory Booker, who helped lead the successful effort to get the expanded credit in the stimulus law. “It is one of the biggest middle-class tax cuts in New Jersey history, plus it’s going to take hundreds of thousands of children in New Jersey out of poverty.”

Nationally, $15 billion will be paid out this month to families with almost 60 million children.

The stimulus law increased the credit this year to $3,600 for children under 6 and $3,000 for those 6-17 from $2,000. Instead of it being claimed on a family’s tax return, the IRS is sending out half of the credit in monthly payments. The rest of the credit can be claimed on 2021 tax returns.

Individuals making up to $75,000 and married couples filing jointly making up to $150,000 will receive the full credit. Those who earn more will see their benefits eventually phase out.

The expanded child tax credit will bring more than 4 million children out of poverty, including 89,000 in New Jersey, according to the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, a progressive research group. That would cut the poverty rate among children in half, senators said.

“This is a big effing deal, one of the biggest effing deals that have been passed in decades,” Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., said at a press conference with Booker and five other Democratic senators. “We are sending taxpayer dollars right back to American parents.”

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Senate Democrats contrasted the Child Tax Credit, which cuts taxes for poor and middle-class families with children, with the 2017 Republican tax law enacted by Donald Trump and congressional Republicans.

According to the Tax Policy Center, 65% of the benefits in the GOP law went to the richest 20% of U.S. households, while the Democratic stimulus law gave 69% of the tax benefits to the bottom 60%.

Biden on Thursday highlighted the child tax credit as the payments went out to American households.

“We’re proving that democracy can deliver for people, and deliver in a timely way, saving lives, improving lives, helping fuel a record-setting recovery, giving working families a fighting chance again,” Biden said at the White House. “Millions of children and their families, starting today, their lives are about to change for the better. And our country will be better off for it as well.”

All week, New Jersey Democrats have highlighted the Child Tax Credit at events in their districts.

“Child Tax Credit monthly payments will help set America’s children up for success and put more money in the pockets of hardworking parents sooner that they can use to pay for child care or put gas in the car,” said Rep. Frank Pallone Jr., D-6th Dist.

And Rep. Donald Payne Jr., D-10th Dist., said the tax credit “will help New Jersey families pay for food, housing and other necessities during this global pandemic.”

Though the Child Tax Credit is to expire at the end of the year, Schumer said it would be extended “for a robust amount of time” as part of the $3.5 trillion spending bill that congressional Democrats plan to pass through reconciliation, preventing a Senate Republican filibuster.

Booker said he still hoped to make the expanded credit permanent.

“We’re working right now to do our best to get permanency,” he said.

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Jonathan D. Salant may be reached at jsalant@njadvancemedia.com. Follow him at @JDSalant.

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