Large Families Less Likely to Receive Benefits from New Tax Plan

But evangelicals cheer higher child tax credit and preserved adoption credit.

Projections indicate that the majority of married couples with zero, one, or two kids using the standard deduction under the new GOP tax plan will end up owing less each April. But what if you have three, five, or seven kids?

Big families, including pro-life religious conservatives with plenty of offspring, may be less likely to see a tax cut under the new plan, which the House of Representatives passed on Tuesday. The Senate also passed the bill early Wednesday morning, and the House will re-vote on changes later today before sending it to President Donald Trump for approval before Christmas.

Republicans have championed the plan as offering more cuts for middle-class families by doubling the standard deduction and increasing the child tax credit. They also wanted to simply the tax code and eliminated the personal exemption—a $4,050 deduction for each dependent in a household.

For most average-sized families, the perks of the new plan outweigh what they would have saved through the personal exemptions. However, large families have enjoyed bigger reductions to their tax burden under the current code, because they had more dependents.

Under the new plan, which goes into effect for 2018, they miss out on tens of thousands of dollars in deductions—more than $28,000 for families with five kids, for example—leaving them with a higher adjusted gross income to be taxed.

The plan “does nothing for big families,” Anthony Illos, who has been preparing taxes for 50 years in the state of New York, told Buffalo News. According to the paper, some tax experts including Illos projected that any family with more than three kids could end up owing more under the new plan due to the elimination of the personal exemption.