$3,000, pathetic!! You ought to be shooting for at least 3x that.
The problem is refundability. You're wasting dollars on poor people. And you're not targeting larger families specifically.
In addition to your $3,000 you should refund the employee part of FICA for families with two kids (7.65%) and all of FICA for families with 3+ kids (15.3%).
For a median family this would mean another $8k for the second and another $8k for the third.
This gets around the refundability issue because FICA is flat tax from first dollar. It scales with income (good) and rewards marriage (if you married both get the tax break). If gives zero to some single mom that isn't working (good). And it doesn't waste money on households with just one kid (they can manage on their own).
It's also justifiable in that future FICA taxes are paid for by current children. Those with large families are already contributing their fair share to FICA through the expenses of raising children. They should not be double taxed.
Permanently eliminating the SALT deduction would fund 90% of the benefit.
Functionally, you would keep collecting FICA taxes and putting them the "trust fund", but you would then issue people a refund from the general fund when they filed their taxes.
$3,000, pathetic!! You ought to be shooting for at least 3x that.
The problem is refundability. You're wasting dollars on poor people. And you're not targeting larger families specifically.
In addition to your $3,000 you should refund the employee part of FICA for families with two kids (7.65%) and all of FICA for families with 3+ kids (15.3%).
For a median family this would mean another $8k for the second and another $8k for the third.
This gets around the refundability issue because FICA is flat tax from first dollar. It scales with income (good) and rewards marriage (if you married both get the tax break). If gives zero to some single mom that isn't working (good). And it doesn't waste money on households with just one kid (they can manage on their own).
It's also justifiable in that future FICA taxes are paid for by current children. Those with large families are already contributing their fair share to FICA through the expenses of raising children. They should not be double taxed.
Permanently eliminating the SALT deduction would fund 90% of the benefit.
Functionally, you would keep collecting FICA taxes and putting them the "trust fund", but you would then issue people a refund from the general fund when they filed their taxes.