In a landslide vote of 357-70, the House of Representatives passed a bipartisan bill titled the Tax Relief for American Families and Workers Act of 2024.
The tax framework is expected to improve housing opportunities for Americans by enhancing programs like the low-income housing tax credit and child tax credit. The bill also should expand innovation and competitiveness with pro-growth economic policies like research and development expensing, build up Main Street by cutting red tape and rebuilding communities that have suffered disasters, and eliminate fraud and waste by ending the employee retention tax credit program.
“This tax package is pro-growth, pro-jobs, and pro-American,” House Ways and Means Committee Chair Jason Smith (R-Mo.), one of the architects of the bill, said in a release. “Both the $600 billion of pro-growth tax incentives that benefit job creators and the structure and work requirements of the child tax credit in this legislation were first signed into law by President [Donald] Trump. Last year, the Ways and Means Committee traveled the country and listened to small business owners and American workers about their ideas to make life better for themselves and their neighbors.
“The Tax Relief for American Families and Workers Act is a direct response to their plea for relief,” he explained. “Because of this bill, working parents crushed by high prices will have an easier time putting food on the table, more things will be made here in America, and the nation will be more competitive with China. I am eager to get this bill passed by the Senate and signed into law. Millions of working families and Main Street businesses are counting on Congress to get this done. Let’s deliver.”
“Sixteen million kids from low-income families will be better off as a result of this plan, and given today’s miserable political climate, it’s a big deal to have this opportunity to pass pro-family policy that helps so many kids get ahead,” Senate Finance Committee Chair Ron Wyden (D-Ore.) said when the bill was introduced. “At a time when so many people in Oregon and all across America are getting clobbered by rising rents and home prices, the improvements this plan makes to the low-income housing tax credit will build more than 200,000 new affordable housing units.”
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