State Earned Income Tax Credits

States weigh cuts to earned income tax credit for working poor, By Pamela M. Prah, March 28, 2011, Stateline.org: “Rohnalda Hollon, a single mother of three in Beaverton, Michigan, and an Iraq war veteran, worries that state budget cutbacks will wipe out the refund she gets from a program aimed at helping the working poor. ‘The $400 from the Earned Income Tax Credit could mean the difference between paying my Consumer’s Energy bill or not,’ says Hollon, who works full-time for the Army National Guard Military Funeral Honors program, and has been put forward as one of the faces of an advocacy campaign called Save Michigan’s Earned Income Tax Credit. Hollan is typical of the recipients of the Michigan credit, which returns an average of $432 to families, most with children. Governor Rick Snyder wants to eliminate the program, along with a slew of other tax credits, in a bid to make the state tax system ‘simple, fair and efficient.’ Eliminating the credits also would help close the state’s $1.8 billion budget deficit. Just scrapping the Earned Income Tax Credit, or EITC, would save the state at least $340 million a year…”