ASK KIM
Sorry, No Child Credit Checks This Year
by Kimberly Lankford

I'm just curious if we will be getting another child tax refund this year. I know I qualify since I looked at my forms, but I still haven't received it this year. I'm waiting patiently and was wondering if the IRS has been having problems with undeliverable mail.

I hate to be the one to let you and a lot of other taxpaying parents down, but you can stop waiting. The child credit refund checks mailed last summer were a one-shot deal.

When Congress increased the child tax credit from $600 to $1,000 in 2003, part of the deal was for the extra $400 per child to be shipped off to parents right away. Last year's checks were actually an advance on the refund you would have received on your 2003 taxes.

The credit is still $1,000 for each child under age 17 whom you claim as a dependent on your return, assuming your income isn't over $110,000 on a joint return (the credit phases out above that level). But there's no advance payment this year.

Assuming you haven't changed tax withholding at work to account for the savings, the extra $400 per child will either decrease what you owe when you file your return or hike your refund. The IRS expects the lack of a summertime advance payment to push refunds to record levels next spring.

But unless Congress extends the credit increase it will shrink to $700 in 2005. The 2003 boost was only approved for two years and expires at the end of 2004. President Bush asked Congress to tack another five years onto the credit, but negotiations broke down just before the senators and representatives took their summer break. As it stands now, the credit will revert to the schedule created in the Economic Growth and Tax Relief Reconciliation Act of 2001: $700 per child in 2005, $800 per child in 2009, $1,000 in 2010, and then back down to $500 in 2011, after which the credit will expire.