Connecticut’s Earned Income Tax Credit benefited 180,000 households last year, its first year of implementation, including 522 households in East Lyme, 168 households in Old Lyme, and 40 in Lyme, according to a report compiled jointly by the Fiscal Policy Center at Connecticut Voices for Children and the Connecticut Association for Human Services.
Both groups called on state policymakers to continue supporting the tax credit for low- and moderate-income workers and to avoid cutbacks during the upcoming legislative session.
The state EITC was approved by the governor and General Assembly in 2011, and was first implemented in 2012 for income earned in 2011.
"The Earned Income Tax Credit is clearly working and making a big difference in the lives of working families," said Wade Gibson, Senior Policy Fellow at the Fiscal Policy Center. "We should continue support for the state credit, which helps to ensure that people who work are able to make ends meet and stay out of poverty."
“The EITC is widely recognized as the single most effective action the state can take to reward work, keep people off of state benefits, and lift kids out of poverty,” said Jim Horan, executive director of the Connecticut Association for Human Services.
“Connecticut has taken a giant step forward with the state’s EITC,” he added. “If we go backwards, and take money out of the pockets of hardworking families, we are taking money away from the communities where they spend that money, and we are jeopardizing our fragile economic recovery.”
You can view a PDF of the town-by-town data on the EITC above.
According to the report:
- In East Lyme, the average amount of the state tax credit for the 2011 tax-filing year was $496. The average household income in East Lyme among those claiming the credit was $17,293.
- In Old Lyme, the average credit amount was $431 and the average income of the households claiming the credit was $15,218.
- In Lyme, the average credit amount was $431 and the average income of the households claiming the credit was $15,797.
- Statewide, the average credit was about $600 and households claiming it had average incomes of about $18,000 – typically what a single parent working full-time just above the minimum wage would earn before paying taxes, the report states.
The study, taken from data at the Connecticut Department of Revenue Services, praised the benefits of the credit for:
- Keeping people employed. The credit can only be claimed by people who earn income through work, and is structured to encourage people to work more.
- Making the state tax code fairer. The EITC was critical in balancing out the regressive impact of recent sales tax increases, which tend to hit low-and moderate-income residents hardest. People only receive the credit if they work and pay taxes, including federal payroll, state, and local taxes.
- Creating a proven anti-poverty tool. The federal EITC lifts more children out of poverty than any other federal program. In 2011, the federal EITC alone kept 61,000 people in Connecticut above the poverty line, including 35,000 children.
Workers who earned $50,270 or less in 2012 and were raising children, and single workers without children who earned $13,980 or less may qualify for the credit this year.
Tax filers can claim the federal and state EITC by filling out the EITC tax schedule form with their tax returns. Workers must claim the federal credit to obtain the state credit.
Free assistance with filing federal and state tax returns will be available for low- to moderate-income people through Volunteer Income Tax Assistance (VITA) sites across the state.
