Overnight, Colorado families began receiving payments as part of the new Advance Child Tax Credit.
As part of the American Rescue Plan, the Child Tax Credit increased to $3,600 for children under the age of 6, and $3,000 for children 6-17. Another change is that half of the credit is now coming in the form of monthly payments from July 15 through Dec. 15.
While there are income limits to receive the full amount of the credit, the government estimates over 90% of families qualify to receive at least a portion.
Greg Nasif, political director with family advocacy group Humanity Forward, said the change to a monthly benefit makes sense because families budget monthly.
“With children under 6, they're going to be getting $300 per month per child, they’ll be getting $250 per child from 6 to 17, and that’s going to make a huge dent in their monthly budget,” Nasif said.
Humanity Forward will be tracking families to see how the money impacts them. The group is pushing to make the Advanced Child Tax Credit permanent.
Denver7 spoke to families who said they’re already factoring the monthly payments into their budgets.
Michael Brofman, a father of a 2-year-old and 4-year-old said their monthly costs include food, diapers, and summer camp.
“Parents — they hemorrhage money. We get blindsided from year to year and month to month,” Brofman said.
He said he expects politicians from both parties will be interested in extending the tax credit.
“You’re not going to want to take money away from kids. I think this is going to be extended for several years and parents are going to love it,” Brofman said.
Ingrid Wulczyn, a mother of two, recently left her job with Denver Public Schools to start her own venture helping students with special needs. She said the money will help cover her family's expenses during her job transition.
“It's incredibly expensive to have kids, specifically coming out of the pandemic when we weren't spending a lot of extra income on kids' activities and now wanting to sort of get them back into those activities,” Wulczyn said.
Parents who haven’t filed taxes in the past two years can visit childtaxcredit.gov to make sure they’re signed up to receive the payments. You can also visit the site to opt out of monthly payments, and to update your address and income information.