October Child Tax Credit Payments Scheduled for Today

The next payment for the child tax credit is being distributed today. Last month about $15 billion was sent to roughly 35 million families with the average payout being $428. Most parents automatically get the enhanced credit of up to $300 for each child up to age 6 and $250 for each ages 6 to 17. The IRS is scheduled to send out two more payments to parents this year. The first two payments were enough to lift 3.5 million kids out of poverty, the child poverty rate was 11.5% in August but would have been 16.2% without the payments.

Low-income households who didn’t file their 2020 or 2019 tax returns or who didn’t use the IRS tool to claim their Coronavirus stimulus checks might not be getting their payments and as many as 2.3 million children may be in those families according to the Treasury Department. 13% of eligible low-income households have not received the first two monthly payments and were uncertain about how to claim it or didn’t know why they didn’t get it according to a survey by the poverty solutions initiative at the University of Michigan.