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Helping Working Families: the Earned Income Tax Credit.

Article Excerpt
by Saul D. HOFFMAN and Laurence S. SEIDMAN, Kalamazoo, Mich.: W. E. Upjohn Institute for Employment Research, 2003, 245 pp., ISBN 0-88099-254-9 (cloth), ISBN 0-88099-253-0 (paper).

This book is an update and expansion (which more than doubles the original length) of Hoffman and Seidman's 1990 Upjohn Institute monograph on the U.S. federal earned income tax credit (EITC) program. Given that much expansion of the EITC program has occurred since 1990, this new version is welcome.

The book opens with an introduction and an overview in Chapter 1 of the history and basic working of the EITC. The EITC program began in a modest version in 1975, whereby a household with at least one child received a ten percent supplement on wage earnings up to four thousand dollars (for a maximum credit of $400), followed by a phase-out range up to a household income of $8000. By comparison, the maximum credit for 2002 was $4140 and the maximum phase-out point was $34,178 (for a married couple with at least one qualifying child). Major expansion of the program occurred in...

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