How much money will families have received from Child Tax Credit by December 2021?

Families with children can expect to receive their next payment for the child tax credit on Monday 15 November. Under the American Rescue Plan, the credit was altered from non-refundable to fully refundable. The value of the credit and its distribution were also changed.

The current credit is worth $3,600 for each child under six and $3,000 for those between six and seventeen. Additionally, the trillion-dollar stimulus bill gave the Internal Revanue Service (IRS) the mandate of sending half of the value of the credit between July and December. The remaining value will be claimed by families when they file their taxes next spring.

December payment

Families will receive their last payment of the year on 15 December. The same amount that has been paid over the previous five months will be paid to families.

However, if you have yet to receive any payments because you did not file taxes in 2019 or 2020, you could see much larger payments. In December these families will receive a lump-sum payment of $1,800 for younger children (under six), and $1,500 for those between six and seventeen.

Those who do not file taxes and have yet to receive any payments for the child tax credit have unit 15 November to sign up. Families can provide the IRS with the necessary information those the getctc.org.

How many low-income families have been missing payments?

Democrats have promoted the child tax credit by touting the program's ability to cut child poverty rates in half by the end of this year. However, in order for the credit to have this effect, it has to reach poor families. The government did not make the task of reaching these families easy as many of the poorest households do not file taxes, meaning that those parents or guardians would need to file using the Non-Filers tool launched by the IRS. 

However, the initial platform on which the tool was held on was deeply flawed, and the version that replaced it had some fundamental issues that limited enrollment. The first website which was developed by Intuit did not have much functionality and many users reported many issues. The IRS never released data on how many families had been able to sign up successfully.

However, the IRS reported in July that it was able to may payments to 720,000 families because parents had registered with the IRS in order to receive federal stimulus checks. However, no information was ever published on how many households were able to register through the initial site. 

The People's Policy Project reported in October that after the new site, developed by Code for America was launched on 12 August "only 24,485 people managed to sign up," by 12 October. What was extremely troubling to researchers was that “2 in 3 people who tried to sign up through the website failed to do so.”As of 11 November, 100,828 applications have been accepted.  Taking into account the families the IRS already had information on, we estimate the agency has been able to send the payments to around fifteen percent of eligible parents. Should the number be higher, now would be a good time for the federal government to set the record straight.