Millions of dollars available for Fresno-area families in Child Tax Credit. How to sign up
In July, many families across the country started receiving payments through the Child Tax Credit.
Over three months into the program, many qualifying families are not receiving the benefit.
New research by the California Policy Lab says that hundreds of thousands of California families are at risk of missing out on these cash benefits, including many children in the Central San Joaquin Valley.
For qualifying families, there is still time to sign up online.
CTC in California: Who’s missing out?
The CTC provides up to $3,600 for children under the age of 6 and up to $3,000 for children ages 6 to 17.
Families with incomes of up to $150,000 are eligible to receive the full credit. Families with zero earnings also became eligible for the first time.
However, many eligible families are falling through the cracks.
According to the report, approximately 650,000 California children are at risk of missing out on the CTC.
CPL analyzed tax filing and safety net enrollment data and found that families who had little reason to file taxes before the pandemic are the most likely to miss out on the CTC.
Around 23% of Fresno County children who qualify for the safety net are at risk of missing out on the CTC, which comes out to around $101,785,800 in funding.
The report found that more than half of these children are identified as Hispanic, and one-third live in households where English is not the primary language.
Children identified as American Indian or Alaskan Native are also among the highest risk of not receiving the CTC.
Nearly half of all children at risk of not receiving the CTC are either part of families headed by undocumented adults or are headed by an adult who would usually not file their own tax return because they could be claimed as a dependent.
About 84% of at-risk households are headed by single adults, and over two-thirds have no observed wage earnings.
Earlier this year, the California Policy Lab found that around 2.2 million Californians were at risk of missing out on the federal stimulus payments, which translates to nearly $5.7 billion lost throughout the whole state.
The central San Joaquin Valley missed out on nearly $1 billion of uncollected stimulus funding.
“Unless the issues and challenges regarding lack of access to the stimulus are addressed, we can expect the Central Valley to face the same or even greater challenges in accessing the CTC,” said Ana Padilla, executive director of the UC Merced Community and Labor Center.
The additional challenge, said Padilla, is reaching the undocumented residents who can access CTC if they have an Individual Tax Identification Number.
This lack of funding comes at a time that experts say that the COVID-19 pandemic exacerbated inequalities in the valley.
There’s still time to sign up for the CTC
Qualifying families can still sign up for the CTC.
For families to qualify for CTC benefits, they will need to file a 2020 tax return. If they are eligible and fall below the non-filer threshold, they can also use the non-filer portal that the IRS relaunched.
Locally, United Way Fresno and Madera Counties has tax preparation services to help families navigate the process.
The California Department of Social Services (CDSS) will also start reaching out to at-risk families this month and use multilingual resources such as GetCTC.org, plus live assistance and mobile-friendly tax-filing solutions to help them file a tax return.
Melissa Montalvo is a reporter with The Fresno Bee and a Report for America corps member. This article is part of The California Divide, a collaboration among newsrooms examining income inequity and economic survival in California.
