Voices for Utah Children Articles
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How to Strengthen Utah's Child Tax Credit in 2025
In 2023, Utah introduced its own child tax credit (CTC) marking a positive step forward. In 2024, the credit was slightly expanded. However, the credit's limited scope falls short of providing real assistance to families raising young children....
- Type: Article
- Author: Jenna Williams
- Category: Updates & Blog
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Tax Policy 101: State Child Tax Credit
What is the State Child Tax Credit? Utah’s Child Tax Credit (CTC) allows eligible families to claim up to an additional $1,000 per qualifying child each year on their state taxes. Whether a parent stays home or both parents work, this tax credit can...
- Type: Article
- Author: Jenna Williams
- Category: Updates & Blog
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What Happened With Child Care During the 2025 Legislative Session?
This 2025 session, supporting families with young children remained a top policy priority of Voices for Utah Children. The urgent need to address families' critical child care needs remained at the forefront of our advocacy efforts. This session was...
- Type: Article
- Author: Jenna Williams
- Category: Updates & Blog
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Utah Child Care Affordability Calculator
In Utah, raising a family with children is expensive. Whether or not a family can afford child care depends on income remaining after paying basic household expenses. To help policymakers understand these challenges, we're introducing the Utah Child...
- Type: Article
- Author: Jenna Williams
- Category: Updates & Blog
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Child Care for Utah's Future: A Call to Action for Elected Officials
This open letter was released on January 31, 2024, by Neighborhood House and Voices for Utah Children, two non-profit organizations working together with other community partners to create a better childcare system in Utah for the benefit of all the...
- Type: Article
- Author: Anna Thomas
- Category: Updates & Blog
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Why Voices Opposes Proposed Income Tax Cuts Over the past four years, Utah's Legislative Leadership has consistently prioritized tax cuts above the needs of Utah's families. Despite a $400 million tax cut passed last year that benefited the most...
- Type: Article
- Author: Jenna Williams
- Category: Updates & Blog
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How to Strengthen Utah's Child Tax Credit
In 2023, Utah introduced its own child tax credit (CTC) marking a positive step forward. However, the credit's limited scope falls short of providing real assistance to families raising young children. As we approach the 2024 legislative session, there...
- Type: Article
- Author: Jenna Williams
- Category: Updates & Blog
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Tax Policy 101: Tax Refundability
Tax policy is complicated. Talking about taxes involves jargon, and concepts that can be confusing. For example, what is a 'refundable' tax credit? What exactly does that mean, and how does it help families? We answer these questions here with a quick...
- Type: Article
- Author: Jenna Williams
- Category: Updates & Blog
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Making Utah Taxes Fair for All Families
Most of us don't enjoy paying taxes. We do it, though, because pooling our money together through taxes makes it possible for us to have roads, schools, libraries and parks, fire fighters and law enforcement, and so many more public goods that none of...
- Type: Article
- Author: Taylor Throne
- Category: Updates & Blog
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Empower Utah Families with Better Income Tax Credits
When it comes to improving the lives of hardworking Utahns, we need policies that help those who are struggling to make ends meet. A refundable Earned Income Tax Credit (EITC) could do just that. Let's start by discussing what the earned income tax...
- Type: Article
- Author: Taylor Thorne
- Category: Updates & Blog
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Higher Child Care Costs and More Stress for Families Coming This Fall
When the pandemic hit, child care was one of the first sectors in crisis. But action in the form of federal aid and swift state program implementation prevented widespread program closures. The nearly $600 million Utah received in federal child care...
- Type: Article
- Author: Jenna Williams
- Category: Updates & Blog
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What Happened with Child Care During the 2023 Legislative Session?
Child care certainly received its fair share of discussion this legislative session, but did anything really happen? The short answer is kinda. Here’s what happened. Funding Requests During the session, Voices for Utah Children teamed up with parents,...
- Type: Article
- Author: Jenna Williams
- Category: Updates & Blog
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Utah's Proposed Child Tax Credit
To date, the state legislature’s minimal efforts to address Utah’s complex child care crisis are completely out of proportion to the scope of the problem. None of those efforts have offered much relief for Utah families with young children who are...
- Type: Article
- Author: Jenna Williams
- Category: Updates & Blog
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The best holiday gift for Utah kids this year: An improved federal Child Tax Credit
Every December Congress meets to try to pass all the urgent items they didn't manage to get done the rest of the year. Usually the list includes tax policy changes demanded by one well-heeled special interest or another. This year is no different. At...
- Type: Article
- Author: Matthew Weinstein
- Category: Updates & Blog
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Utah's Child Care Crisis is About to Hit a Whole New Level
Since the start of the pandemic, Utah has received nearly $600 million in emergency federal funding to ensure that our child care sector can continue to serve families despite nearly overwhelming COVID-era challenges. In one year, at the end of...
- Type: Article
- Author: Anna Thomas
- Category: Updates & Blog
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The Reconciliation Bill is Good for Immigrant Families!
Right now, Congress is in the process of debating and potentially passing a reconciliation bill that includes a number of provisions that are good for immigrant families. During the next couple of weeks and months, we will see several updates and...
- Type: Article
- Author: Ciriac Alvarez Valle
- Category: Updates & Blog
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Investing in Early Care and Education Professionals Will Strengthen Utah Child Care
Utah leaders should be investing in child care professionals through paid training and educational opportunities, refundable tax credits for people who provide care and learning opportunities directly to young children, and other direct incentives that...
- Type: Article
- Author: Anna Thomas
- Category: Updates & Blog
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It’s Time for the Child-Centered Child Care System that Utah Families Deserve
For too many years, child are policy – in Utah and nationally – has been shaped primarily by economic and political forces. These forces have shaped our perceptions of early care and education: “People need childcare because they should be working....
- Type: Article
- Author: Anna Thomas
- Category: Updates & Blog