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.

During the session, Voices for Utah Children teamed up with parents, child care professionals, and early childhood advocates to lobby the state legislature for more than $260 million to stabilize Utah’s child care system. This was, admittedly, a big ask. But the requests highlighted the reality of the child care sector’s needs. Many of the state funding requests aimed to replace expiring federal pandemic money that has been propping up the sector. This emergency federal funding will begin to end in June 2023 and will fully expire by June 2024. 

Child Care Stabilization Grants, Rep. Andrew Stoddard
Federal Child Care Stabilization Grants have been a lifeline for Utah's child care sector. Child care providers have indicated the lack of ongoing stabilization funding will result in one or more of the following three outcomes: child care programs will close, tuition will be raised for families, and/or employees will have lower wages. This funding would have allowed for a one-year extension of the stabilization grants currently received by hundreds of child care providers in Utah. 
Requested: $216 Million
Outcome: NOT FUNDED

Retention Incentives for Early Childhood Professionals, Sen. Luz Escamilla
In 2022, federal funding allowed Utah's Office of Child Care issued $2,000 bonuses to eligible workers serving in child care positions to provide recognition for their critical work throughout the COVID pandemic and to improve retention within the field. 9,368 child care professionals received retention incentives through this program. This funding request would have continued this incentive program for an additional two years while structural reforms were pursued. 
Requested: $38 Million
Outcome: NOT FUNDED

Regional Child Care Development Grants, Rep. Ashlee Matthews 
Through federal funding, Utah's six Regional Care about Child Care Resource & Referral Agencies supported new programs for rural outreach, small business training, start-up grants, and professional development. This funding would have continued these grants for another three years to continue programming that works to expand child care access and improve care in both rural and urban areas.
Requested: $2.1 Million
Outcome: NOT FUNDED

Child Care Licensing-Related Fees, Rep. Ashlee Matthews
With COVID-relief funding, the Office of Child Care Licensing has waived the fees associated with licensing in order to lessen the barriers to expanding, maintaining, and opening new child care programs. This funding would have extended this fee coverage for another three years as the state tackles the child care crisis. 
Requested: $3 Million
Outcome: NOT FUNDED

Child Care Solutions and Workforce Productivity Plan, Sen. Luz Escamilla
A priority of the Governor’s Office of Economic Opportunity’s Women in the Economy  Subcommittee, these funds will support strategic planning for child care solutions.
Requested: $250,000
Outcome: $150,000

Legislation

HB 167: State Child Care, Rep. Ashlee Matthews & Sen. Luz Escamilla
This bill provides the framework for State agencies to convert empty state buildings to on-site child care. It will allow private providers to rent the space and operate from the facility, creating greater access to child care for employees and the greater community.
Outcome: PASSED

HB 170: Child Tax Credit Revisions, Rep. Susan Pulsipher & Sen. Daniel McCay
This bill provides a non-refundable yearly tax credit of $1,000 per child between the ages of 1-3 for families making between $43,000–$54,000 per year. Because the bill’s original intent was to help with the cost of child care, we’d like to see this expanded to help children ages 0-6, as it did in the original bill. This legislation makes Utah the 13th state with its very own state child tax credit.
Outcome: AMENDED VERSION PASSED 

HB 282: Child Care Sales Tax Exemption, Rep. Christine Watkins
This bill would have allowed for a sales and use tax exemption for construction materials used to construct or expand a child care program.
Outcome: BILL NEVER HEARD IN COMMITTEE

Advocacy

While our policy wins feel small, it was a stellar year for child care advocacy. We hosted our first Child Care Advocacy Day, where we welcomed over 100 parents, kiddos, providers, and supporters of child care in Utah’s Capitol Rotunda! The turnout far surpassed expectations and we hosted many new faces. We look forward to continuing to grow our network of child care advocates and working on solutions to child care during the interim. 

To learn more about child care advocacy in Utah, visit UtahCareforKids.org.

The Legislature finished its 2023 General Session last Friday evening, March 3rd. In the area of tax policy, we've prepared the chart above to summarize the tax cuts passed this year. 

The tax cuts that will go into effect in the next year add up to $408 million. Three-fifth of that amount goes to the highest-earning one-fifth of Utahns, and four-fifths goes to the top two-fifths. That leaves just one-fifth for the 60% of Utahns earning under $92,000. Unfortunately, these changes do nothing to improve the overall regressivity of Utah's current tax structure. 

The picture improves slightly if we count the $200 million elimination of the state sales tax on unprepared food. Because the food tax is the most regressive element of our most regressive tax, removing it does reduce (but not eliminate) the regressivity in Utah's tax structure. (This part of HB 54 will only go into effect in 2025 if voters approve a Constitutional amendment ending the earmarking of income tax for education in November 2024. That earmark was broadened in 1996 to add higher education and again in 2020 via Amendment G to add all programs for children and for disabled Utahns to the permitted uses of income tax revenues.)

To clarify, we consider Utah's overall tax structure to be regressive because the highest income Utahns pay the lowest share of their incomes in state and local taxes, based on the analysis at www.ITEP.org/WhoPays/Utah. 

We welcome the proposed elimination of the grocery tax and the reduced regressivity it would bring, especially since it benefits all low-income Utahns, including the considerable number who never file a tax return. We also welcome the much smaller but still beneficial impacts of the new non-refundable Child Tax Credit (CTC) and slightly expanded non-refundable Earned Income Tax Credit (EITC). Here are some specifics on those: 

• Elimination of the $200 million state grocery tax reduces taxes on the lowest-income fifth of Utahns (those earning under $31,000) by $18 million, and it reduces taxes on the lowest-income two-fifths (those earning under $59,000) by a total of $48 million.
• The new Child Tax Credit (CTC) reduces taxes for those same two-fifths of Utahns by $9 million. It also makes Utah the 13th state with our own CTC, though NCSL's website indicates that ours will be one of just four that are non-refundable. 
• The slightly expanded Utah EITC adds a reduction of $1 million for the low- and moderate-income 40% of Utahns. Sadly, it still excludes the lowest-income 80-90% of Utah's federal EITC recipients because it remains non-refundable.

Those three tax reductions add up to $58 million for low- and moderate-income Utahns, which means that less than 10% of the overall tax cut reaches the 40% of the population that needs it most. (For more about why refundability is critical for the effectiveness of family tax credits like the ETC and CTC, please visit https://www.utahfamilytaxcredits.org/learnmore/.)

Unfortunately, the majority of the $608 million in tax cuts goes to Utahns earning six-figure incomes, who neither need nor are asking for tax cuts. In fact, the survey conducted during the legislative session by the Deseret News and Hinckley Institute found that just 18% of Utahns wanted a tax cut. The overwhelming majority supported investing more in education, infrastructure, saving the Great Salt Lake, and other building blocks of Utah's future prosperity and success: 

 This result is consistent with previous polling on the question of whether Utah should be cutting taxes. Previous polls include....

• Deseret News/Hinckley Institute 2022
• Deseret News/Hinckley Institute 2021
• Deseret News/Hinckley Institute 2020
• Utah Foundation 2020
• Envision Utah 2020

Clearly the public is more concerned than Utah's political leaders about the billions of dollars in unmet needs identified by the Invest In Utah's Future coalition. The public is probably also aware of the two biggest problems with cutting the income tax: 

1. Cutting the income tax leads to higher property taxes as the local districts struggle to make up the lost education revenues. And in fact, the last 14 years have seen inflation-adjusted per-student local education revenue (from property taxes) rise 12% while inflation-adjusted per-student state funding (from the income tax) fell 2.5%. Given the spike in local property taxes in the last year or two, it was disappointing to see that the Legislature failed to pass even very modest measures like HB 260 that would have devoted $5 million to expand eligibility for the state's property tax relief programs to more low- and moderate-income households. 
2.  Cutting $400 million from the income tax breaks down to well over $500 per student diverted from the main source of education funding. For the median income family of four, they gain about $200 in tax cuts -- but lose over $1,000 that now will not be invested every year in their own kids' education. 

Unfortunately, the Utah Legislature has proven once again that it is all too ready to give in to the tax cut temptation, even though Utah already has the 7th lowest taxes in the nation according to WalletHub, and despite the fact that we are already a top 10 state nationally for our business-friendly taxes, according to the Tax Foundation. 

           *****           *****         *****          ******

WE'VE POSTED A VIDEO WALK-THROUGH OF THE CHART ABOVE AT https://fb.watch/jcAUe4-Rqr/ 

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 struggling with the rising cost of child care. They certainly don’t contemplate the urgency of the impending “federal funding cliff” that is about to push child care costs even further through the roof. 

Policy proposals that require a meaningful investment of state dollars - and pretty much all the effective ones will - have been ignored by elected officials. 

Before the session ends on March 3rd, however, the legislature has a chance to pass legislation that would actually provide financial relief for some families with young children. 

Yes, it will require state investment - but the one kind of investment that legislators seem most enthusiastic about: a tax cut!

Well, a tax CREDIT, which is sort of like a tax cut for the Utahns who qualify. 

Representative Susan Pulsipher (R-South Jordan) has introduced a narrowly-tailored Child Tax Credit, which would allow families to claim up to an extra $1,000 per child each year, to help cover a small portion of the staggering costs of caring for a child. Families that make more money can claim a smaller amount, on a sliding scale. 

The bill is House Bill 170: Child Tax Credit Amendments (originally named "Child Care Tax Credit Amendments). It has only recently moved forward in the legislative process, after its initial introduction in mid-January. With just a couple of weeks left in the session, there is still a chance that this tax credit - with a price tag of less than $41 million - could be included in whatever tax package the legislature inevitably passes. 

Rep. Pulsipher’s goal is to help families who still struggle to afford the costs of raising young children. 

The money they save with this tax credit can be used by families in any way that works for them. If a parent stays home, it can help cushion the financial burden of having a one-income household. If both parents work, it can be used to cover the costs of child care while they are working. 

There are a few catches, though:

• This $1,000 tax credit can only be claimed for children who are under the age of six at the time you file your taxes. Child care costs go way down for a family once a child is enrolled in school. 
• In order to be eligible, your household must meet certain household income requirements (for example, a household with a joint filing status must be less than $56,000 to quality for the full amount of the credit).
• If your family makes more than a certain amount of money, you can still claim this tax credit, but it is phased out based on your household income. 
• If you don’t end up owing any income taxes when all the math is said and done, you won’t get a check in the mail from the state for each child. This tax credit would be “non-refundable.” That means the tax credit can only be used to put a dent in the income taxes you owe; it can’t put extra money in your pocket if your income taxes calculate down to zero. 
• You won’t be able to claim the tax credit THIS YEAR. Or even next year. It would go into effect when you file your 2024 taxes in 2025. 

Even with these strict parameters, we think having a Child Tax Credit available for some Utah families is a great step toward grappling with our state’s child care problems in a meaningful way. 

HB170 offers legislators an opportunity to show they are willing to invest in families with young children in the face of a crisis that is about to get a lot worse. We hope they take it!

Write to your legislators about HB170 “Child Tax Credit Amendments!”

At two large pre-legislative events in the second week of January, hundreds of attendees heard Utah's Senate President proudly assert that Utah was the only state that increased education funding during the pandemic. 

Every year, especially around the end of every legislative session, Utah's political leaders proclaim that they are putting record amounts of funding into education. 

Unfortunately, these claims are contradicted by the data published by the Utah State Board of Education in its Superintendent's Annual Report. 

Real FY21 and FY22 State + Local Education Funding Did Not Rise -- It Fell

These data are from the USBE Superintendent's Annual Reports, adjusted for inflation using the standard CPI-U inflation index from the federal Bureau of Labor Statistics. They show that Utah's real (inflation-adjusted) state + local education funding fell in both FY21 and FY22, both in total and on a per-student basis. (During those two fiscal years, the Utah Legislature passed over $300 million in income tax cuts.) 

State Education Funding Has Fallen While Local Education Funding Has Risen

We have heard legislative leaders assert every year that they have appropriated record amounts for education. We have also sometimes heard them say that local education funding (from property taxes) has not kept up, and that is the reason that overall education funding is inadequate to reduce Utah's largest-in-the-nation class sizes or address our high rates of new teacher turnover. Yet the data from USBE show two trends that contradict these claims, as illustrated in the chart above: 

1. 1. Real per-student state education funding was 2.5% lower in 2022 than in 2008 (the peak year for education funding before the Great Recession). 
   2. Real per-student local education funding was 12% higher in 2022 than in 2008. 

It is also worth noting, in this context, that permanently cutting the state income tax rate, as the Legislature has done in recent years and is considering doing once again this year, tends to put additional pressure on local property taxes to make up the difference for schools. The income tax and the property tax are the two main sources of funding for education. If policymakers intentionally and repeatedly undermine one of them, that inevitably creates pressure to increase the other (or allow it to increase naturally, as has happened the last two years with property taxes as home values have shot up).  

Can We Have Record Education Funding and Record Tax Cuts?

Legislative leaders have used their incorrect claims that Utah increased education funding during the pandemic to bolster their case that Utah can have it all -- record high levels of education funding and record tax cuts. But USBE data reveal that, in fact, we cannot have it all, that tradeoffs exist, and that hard choices must be made. If we have record tax cuts, we likely will not have record levels of education funding. If we want to strengthen education finance for the long-term betterment of our children and our state, we ought to consider what we are giving up when we give in to the tax cut temptation.  

One Final Comment: Inputs vs Outcomes

Needless to say, this entire discussion concerns only inputs to, not outcomes of, our K-12 public education system. But, as one superintendent wisely observed over a decade ago, "We cannot have the best school system in the country and be the lowest in the country in funding. We can't be first if we're always last." 

While there is little doubt that Utah does more with less in our public schools better than probably any other state, there are several key educational outcome measures that most concern Voices for Utah Children: 

• Our high school graduation rates are no higher than or below national averages for nearly every racial and ethnic category. 
• Our high school graduation rate gaps between haves and have-nots and between majority and minority groups are larger than nationally.
• Our rate of college degrees, an area where Utah's older generations outpaced the nation, has fallen behind the nation's among our younger generation, the Millennial generation, based on Census data for Utahns age 25-34. 

Closing these gaps and regaining our once enviable lead will require substantial new investments at every step in the pipeline, from expanding pre-K and full-day kindergarten options to reducing class sizes and new teacher turnover in our elementary, middle, and high schools, to ensuring that more of our sons and daughters finish what they start at our public colleges and universities. 

 Note: The charts in this blog post are from Voices for Utah Children's forthcoming "Children's Budget Report 2023" that will be published in February 2023.

Both graphs are available for download here. 

Methodology and Location of Data  

Utah’s education funding rises each year, but so does the student population. And prices rise due to inflation, which has been worse the last year than in 40 years. So how can we judge whether education funding is really going up, as our political leaders always claim? There is one metric considered to be the gold standard for this purpose: inflation-adjusted per-student spending. To calculate this metric, you need three pieces of data. The locations of these items are detailed below:

1. State, Local, and Federal Education Spending

Source: Utah State Board of Education Superintendent’s Annual Report at www.schools.utah.gov/superintendentannualreport

Direct Document Link: Statewide Total: Revenue and Expenditures by Fund, June 30, 2022 https://www.schools.utah.gov/file/674392fc-3946-4ba2-ba19-da7f024f3fe5 

Comments: In the charts above, we used the state and local education spending data

2. K-12 Student Population

Source: Utah State Board of Education Superintendent’s Annual Report at www.schools.utah.gov/superintendentannualreport

Direct Document Link:  Fall Enrollment by Grade Level and Demographics, October 1, School Year 2022-2023  https://www.schools.utah.gov/file/5c8e2fac-55dc-4f0a-bf6a-6889133e4ffe 

Comments: Be sure to use the fall enrollment data from the fall of the year you are analyzing. For example, for FY/SY22, use October 2021 enrollment data.   

3. Inflation Index CPI-U

Source: US Bureau of Labor Statisticshttps://www.bls.gov/data/home.htm 

Direct Document Link:  All Urban Consumers (Current Series) (Consumer Price Index - CPI) https://data.bls.gov/cgi-bin/surveymost?cu  U.S. city average, All items - CUUR0000SA0....then use “Annual Averages”  

Google Sheet with all collected data, sources & formulas

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1fTy8wKHY6Di33eRLTcM7Ce1B5Caw10sb/edit#gid=534909710

BROAD COALITION CALLS FOR INVESTMENT IN UTAH’S FUTURE RATHER THAN TAX CUTS, DOCUMENTS $5.6 BILLION IN URGENT UNMET NEEDS

Salt Lake City – On Monday, January 23, 2023 at the Utah State Capitol, a broad and diverse coalition of advocates for the poor, for disabled Utahns, for education, health care, clean air, the Great Salt Lake, transportation investment, and a variety of other popular Utah priorities held a press conference calling on the Utah Legislature to prioritize addressing Utah’s long and growing list of unmet needs over permanent tax cuts that undermine our long-term capacity to invest in Utah’s future.

Utah’s strong economy and rapid recovery from the pandemic, combined with the ongoing impact of federal spending, have generated unexpected state revenues amounting to a reported $3.3 billion available for FY2024. These revenues put Utah in a position to address chronic revenue shortages that have plagued numerous areas of state responsibility. Instead, state leaders have proposed roughly half a billion dollars in permanent tax cuts, tilted unfairly toward the high end of the income scale, as well as additional hundreds of billions in one-time tax breaks.   

These new proposed permanent tax cuts would be over and above the roughly $4 billion that the Legislature has already cut from annual revenues in recent decades, leaving Utah’s taxes at their lowest level in half a century, relative to incomes.

In response, today the Invest in Utah’s Future coalition presented a list of urgent unmet needs amounting to $5.6 billion, over $2 billion more than the amount of the “surplus” revenues.

The advocates also pointed out that, according to data from the Utah State Tax Commission and the Utah Foundation, taxes in Utah are the lowest that they have been in decades, following repeated rounds of tax cutting. “Of course we all like paying lower taxes, but at a certain point we have to ask ourselves: Is it possible to have too much of a good thing? Are we, as the current generation of Utahns, meeting our responsibility, as earlier generations did, to set aside sufficient resources every year to invest in our children, in our future, in the foundations of the next generation’s prosperity and quality of life?” said Matthew Weinstein of Voices for Utah Children.

Speakers also referenced public opinion surveys by the Deseret News and Hinckley Institute that found that only 25% of Utahns support tax cutting over investing in Utah’s future, consistent with other polls done in recent years by the same organizations as well as by Envision Utah and the Utah Foundation.

Here is the list of urgent unmet needs that Utah has not been able to address due to the state’s chronic revenue shortages:

 The press conference was broadcast live on Facebook: https://fb.watch/ieyT_0Zi14/?mibextid=RUbZ1f 

Media coverage: 

• KJZZ: Local organizations oppose statewide tax cuts, call for investments in Utah's future instead 
• Deseret News: Time to invest more in education, housing, water and other areas, group says 
• KUTV-2: Local organizers oppose tax cuts, call for investments in Utah's future instead
• KSL: Don't cut taxes, advocacy groups urge Utah lawmakers. Here's why. 
• UtahPolicy.com  

 Additional one-pagers distributed by some of the coalition members: 

• Circles Salt Lake: Background about Circles and one-pager about benefits cliffs
• Transit: Utah Transit Riders Union info and one-pager about free-fare transit
• Community Action Partnership of Utah one-pager about rural Utah's needs 
• Child care one-pager from UtahCareforKids.org 
• Housing affordability one-pager from Utah Housing Coalition

* * SEE COMPLETE ANALYSIS OF THE LEGISLATURE'S $400 MILLION TAX CUT PROPOSAL AT THE BOTTOM OF THIS PAGE * *

The 2023 Legislature's annual seven-week General Session has begun! At the top of the agenda for the Governor and Legislative leadership: tax cuts. 

While Voices for Utah Children and many other advocates for Utah's most vulnerable populations are deeply concerned about the long-term detrimental effect of tax cuts on state and local governments' abilities to meet their obligations to Utahns (see www.InvestInUtahsFuture.org for more about that), we are also cognizant of the political reality that tax cuts are popular with Utah's political leadership (in contrast to public opinion).

If there's one thing Voices for Utah Children has learned following tax policy in recent years, it's that not all tax cuts are created equal. Hence this guide to the tax cuts being proposed this year. Note, the legislature has since changed the proposed income tax cut from $200m to $400m further resulting in even greater tax cuts mostly for Utah's top income earners. 

Ranking the Tax Cut Proposals

We rank the tax cuts by regressivity -- do they make our overall tax system more or less regressive than it currently is? Regressivity is about fairness. Utah's current overall state + local tax system is regressive/unfair in the sense that the highest income households pay a lower overall share of their incomes in state and local taxes than low- and middle-income households.

The chart above illustrates whether each individual proposed tax cut would make Utah's taxes even more unfair, or would it reduce the inequities in the current tax structure. We illustrate the impact of the proposals in the chart below two different ways:

1) By share of the tax cut: How does it slice the pie? Who gets the big pieces and who's stuck with the crumbs (or nothing at all)? 

2) By dollar amounts: How much does an average family benefit each year at each income level? (we provided this information for each tax cut that is available to all taxpayers but not for the more targeted ones that only go to a smaller subset like the Social Security and child tax credits)

Important Background Information

What are the major taxes in Utah and who pays them?

• The sales tax: Our most regressive tax -- meaning it takes a bigger bite percentage-wise out of the incomes of low- and middle-income families than their high-income neighbors. (And same goes for the gas tax.)
• The property tax: Not as regressive as the sales or gas taxes but still costs lower-income families a greater share of their incomes than higher-income families, including non-homeowners who pay it indirectly through their rent.
• The income tax: Utah's only non-regressive tax. The only one that lines up with Utah's income distribution, following the 3/5--1/5 Rule: Three-fifths of all Utah income is earned by the top one-fifth of taxpayers, and three-fifths of the income tax is paid by that same high-income group. KEEP IN MIND: When the Legislature cuts the income tax rate, not only do they make our tax system more regressive overall, they also put more pressure on local property taxes, which tend to rise to make up for the lost education funding when the income tax rate is cut. As a result, cutting the income tax means a tax shift from state to local and from the highest-income Utahns to middle-class and low-income households. 

See more details about who pays which taxes in Utah and how our overall tax structure is regressive at www.ITEP.org/WhoPays/Utah. 

How Do These Proposed Tax Cuts Compare to Last Year?

Last year, the 2022 Utah Legislature passed SB 59 -- about $200 million of permanent tax cuts.

• The majority of the breaks went to the highest income fifth of Utahns, those earning above about $130,000.
• Just 6% of last year's tax cuts went to the bottom two-fifths of Utahns, those earning under about $60,000 a year.

2022 SB 59 Tax Cuts Summary

ANALYSIS OF THE 2023 LEGISLATURE'S $400 MILLION TAX CUT PROPOSAL

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 the top of the lobbyists' wish list is reportedly "extending soon-to-expire business tax breaks... affecting research and development costs, investment deductions and debt write-offs."

But what about the tax policy issues directly impacting Congress's youngest constituents? It's true that children don't have fancy lawyers and lobbyists and PACs making big campaign contributions. But they do have a few scrappy nonprofits speaking up for their interests and backed by millions of parents. And at the top of the children's wish list this month is improvements to the federal Child Tax Credit. 

The federal CTC does a world of good every year for families all over Utah and across the nation.  Well over a third of Utahns qualify for the CTC every year when they file their taxes. That's over half a million households! And the amount of the CTC received by these Utah families exceeds $1.6 billion -- that's billion with a b. Wow! 

But there is a problem with the Child Tax Credit. Tens of thousands of Utah families fail to qualify every year for the full credit of $2,000 per child for a simple reason: The parents work low-wage jobs -- often working long hours -- but their low hourly wages still leave their incomes below the minimum level required under current tax law to qualify for the full credit -- over $29,000 of income for a single parent with two kids, for example. In other words, a single mom working full-time at $12/hour makes too little to qualify for the full CTC under its current rules. 

That means over 150,000 Utah kids every year are left out and left behind -- and these are the very kids who would benefit most from the proven positive impacts of refundable tax credits like the CTC -- including better educational outcomes and higher labor force participation rates years later when they become adults.  

And it gets worse: While most of the kids excluded from the CTC are white, disproportionate numbers of them are from Utah's communities of color, including an estimated 50,000 Latino children, comprising 29% of Utah’s Latino child population, as well as 6,000 Native American children, comprising 75% of Utah’s Native American children. This means that a tax credit that has incredible potential to reduce societal disparities is instead making them worse. 

That's a real shame, because the CTC does a lot to reduce child poverty already. National data from the Census Bureau's Supplemental Poverty Measure has found that refundable tax credits, including both the Child Tax Credit and Earned Income Tax Credit, reduced child poverty from where it would have been -- 18% or one-in-six children -- to 12.5% or one-in-eight children in 2019. That's over 4 million children lifted out of poverty. And if we could make the full CTC available to all the lower-income kids now being left out, that would help an additional 19 million children who need the help most. 

Even if Congress lacks the political consensus to restore the temporary 2021 CTC boost that cut child poverty last year by 36%, there are several more incremental ideas that would help a lot of kids: 

• Implement a more rapid phase-in of the refundable credit, as proposed by Sen. Mitt Romney in his Family Security Act 2.0 proposal from earlier this year.
• Make the full credit available without a phase-in for families with children under the age of 6. 
• Exempt from the phase-in grandparents acting as custodial parents and parents whose disabilities impact their ability to work.
• Institute a look-back policy that counts previous years' earned income in determining whether a work requirement has been met.
• Restore the pre-2017 status quo where all children in immigrant families could receive the CTC.

The role of Utah's Congressional delegation in any Child Tax Credit improvements passed this month is expected to be one of the keys to success. After all, it was Utah Senator Mike Lee who demanded that Congress include improvements to the CTC in the 2017 TCJA legislation (though that law also cut off an estimated 1 million immigrant children without Social Security numbers from the credit). And it is Senator Romney who has put far-reaching additional improvements on the table with his Family Security Act proposals. 

If you agree that Congress should act this month to improve the Child Tax Credit, let your Representative and our two Senators hear from you!  Lifting more kids out of poverty would truly be a wonderful holiday gift for Utah's children this year. 

New Economic Benchmarking Report Finds Utah Ahead of Texas in Most Key Metrics of Economic Opportunity and Standard of Living

Salt Lake City, August 31, 2022 - Voices for Utah Children released today the fifth in its series of economic benchmarking reports that evaluate how the Utah economy is experienced by median- and lower-income families by benchmarking Utah against another state.  This year's report, authored by Taylor Throne and Matthew Weinstein with support from intern Bryce Fairbanks from the University of Utah Department of Economics, compares Utah to Texas.  While the Economic Opportunity benchmarks come out nearly even, with Utah ahead in 11 and Texas ahead in 8, in the Standard of Living category Utah predominates in 20 categories and Texas in just two.

Voices for Utah Children's Economic Analyst Taylor Throne commented, "It seems clear that Texas has more to learn from Utah than vice versa. In terms of economic opportunity, Utah outperforms Texas for our labor force participation rate and our low unemployment rate (see page 13 of the report). In education, while both states are in the bottom 10 for investment, Utah claims much better 4th and 8th grade math and reading scores. At the university level, Utah invests more and enjoys stronger educational attainment levels (though our younger generation has lost the lead over the nation enjoyed by our older generations.) (See page 17.)  Utah ranks 1st in the nation for our low level of income inequality, while Texas ranks 38th. We also stand out for intergenerational mobility and rank #1 for education funding fairness while Texas ranks 34th (see page 21). In the second part of the report where we measure standard of living. Utah is the clear winner in most measures. Utah enjoys much lower rates of poverty and uninsured children (though both states rank at the bottom for insuring Hispanic/Latino children) (see page 25).The most recent Kids Count overall ranking has Utah 4th and Texas 45th (see page 29). Utah also has shorter commutes, higher homeownership rates, and more volunteerism and voter participation (see page 33)." 

Voices for Utah Children's State Priorities Partnership Director Matthew Weinstein commented, "The main takeaways from this report and the others in the series are that Utah's economic successes put us in a position to make the new upfront investments we need to make now -- in education, public health, poverty prevention, and closing racial/ethnic gaps -- so that we can achieve our true potential and follow in the footsteps of states like Colorado and Minnesota that have become high-wage states and achieved a higher standard of living, and do it in such a way that all our children can have a better future."  

The report release presentation took place online and can be viewed at https://fb.watch/ffuSPZ09MR/. The presenters included both Taylor Throne and Matthew Weinstein as well as a special guest, Brandon Dew, President of Central Utah Labor Council.  

View Report

Utah's Top Economic Advantages: Hard Work & Strong Families Allow Utah to Enjoy High Household Incomes and Low Poverty 

Can Texas Learn Any Lessons from Utah? 

Utah enjoys a higher real median household income than Texas, ranking #11 nationally, although past inequities have left a legacy of barriers causing significant gaps between the median wage of different racial and ethnic groups.  Utah's higher incomes are due largely to our high labor force participation rates and our preponderance of two-worker (often two-parent) households.  

Even though Texas has a larger GDP per capita and ranks ahead of Utah for business climate, Utah has a higher share of people working and fewer people looking and unable to find work. Utah ranks 1st in the nation for income equality by the GINI Index, 1st for K-12 funding equity, and has fewer people living below the poverty line.

Utah is the clear winner by most standard of living measures. The most recent Kids Count overall ranking has Utah 4th and Texas 45th.  Utah also has shorter commutes, higher homeownership rates, and more volunteerism and voter participation. Utah also has a much fairer tax system.  Texas applies one of the highest tax rates in the nation (6th highest) to households with the lowest incomes and applies one of the lowest tax rates (9th lowest) to households with the highest income. This is because Texas has no personal or corporate income tax to offset the regressivity of their major revenue sources: sales, excise, and property taxes.  As a result, Texas is one of the highest-tax states in the nation for lower-income residents, and one of the lowest-tax states for the wealthy.

Can Utah Learn Any Lessons from Texas? 

Texas leads in early childhood education for pre-k and full-day kindergarten participation. Texas also has a much smaller gender wage gap than Utah, which ranks as one of the worst states for gender equality. When disaggregated by race and ethnicity, Texas has a smaller gender wage gap than Utah for every race and ethnicity except Latino and Native Hawaiian and Pacific Islander women.

Policy Implications

Strengthening the Labor Force

Utah and Texas are both far below the national average for median (50th percentile) and 10th percentile hourly wages, likely due to the fact that both are among the 20 states that never raised their minimum wages above the 2009 federal minimum of just $7.25 (now at its lowest level since 1956), and both states are among the 27 that discourage union membership through “right-to-work” laws. 

Addressing the Legacy of and Present Barriers Causing Racial & Ethnic Gaps

Racial and ethnic gaps are evident in almost every outcome where race and ethnicity are disaggregated, such as high school graduation rates, wages, gender pay gaps, poverty rates, and uninsured rates. It is important to note that these gaps were caused by social, economic, and political structures and policies that have perpetuated racial inequality, elaborated in our report. Such policies have had very serious consequences for people of color, especially children of color. And as in the rest of the nation, the COVID-19 pandemic has exacerbated these hardships. Addressing these gaps through investments in early childhood and K-12 education, specifically where there is a high concentration of children of color (which includes many communities along the Wasatch Front, including Ogden, Salt Lake City, South Salt Lake, West Valley City, Midvale, and Provo) would likely increase educational attainment, wages, and standard of living overall and would therefore contribute to reducing racial and ethnic gaps in the future.  

Restoring Education Funding Effort

The link between education and income is well-established. States with higher education levels generally have higher levels of worker productivity, wages, and incomes. Voices for Utah Children has demonstrated elsewhere that Utah’s education funding effort has fallen from top 10 in the nation in the 1990s to the bottom 10 states today. While Utah “does more with less” in education compared to other states, will we be able to continue to advance without addressing the underfunding in our public education system? Utah has racial/ethnic educational outcome gaps which are larger than the national average, our pupil-to-teacher ratio is 3rd worst in the nation at 23:1 vs the national average of 16:1, and teacher pay has also fallen by 2% over the past 50 years, while teacher salaries nationally have increased 7%.

At the college level, Utah historically was always ahead of the national average for attainment of bachelor’s degrees and above. But Census data show Utah’s lead shrinking relative to the nation with each successive generation, to the point now that Utah millennials (ages 25-34) have fallen behind their peers nationally, despite relatively generous state support and low tuition levels. In addition, for young adults who do not seek to complete a college degree, apprenticeships and other skilled training programs or ensuring state contracts pay the prevailing local wage are two policies that have proven their value for achieving higher wages.

Can Utah Become a High-Wage State?

Utah has gone from being a low-wage state a generation ago to middle-wage status today, a considerable accomplishment. One question Utah leaders may now wish to consider is, is that good enough? Should we declare, “Mission Accomplished”? Or is Utah in a position, like Colorado and Minnesota before us, to become, over time, a high-wage state and set our sights on taking the necessary steps today to achieve that goal over the years and decades to come?

Similarly, how do we include those earning the lowest wages in the gains Utah has made and will potentially make in the future?  Utah is not even a half percentage point lower than the national share of workers earning poverty-level wages and lags behind the nation’s 10th percentile wage, ranking 33rd.  Even as the state with the lowest income inequality ranking in the nation, Utah suffers from a tremendous gap between low-income workers and the rest of the income scale.

The main lesson that emerges from the Working Families Benchmarking Project reports comparing Utah to Colorado, Minnesota, Idaho, Arizona and now Texas is the following: Higher levels of educational attainment translate into higher hourly wages, higher family incomes, and an overall higher standard of living. The challenge for policymakers is to determine the right combination of public investments in education, infrastructure, public health, and other critical needs that will enable Utah to continue our progress and achieve not just steady growth in the quantity of jobs, but also a rising standard of living that includes moderate- and lower-income working families from all of Utah’s increasingly diverse communities.

The 41-page report is available for download here. 

MEDIA COVERAGE OF THE BENCHMARKING PROJECT:

The Spectrum: https://www.thespectrum.com/story/news/2022/09/02/report-compares-utah-texas-economy-standard-living-homes-jobs/7970912001/ 

KSL News Radio: https://kslnewsradio.com/1974565/new-report-ranks-utah-above-texas-in-aspects-of-economic-opportunity-and-standard-of-living/

Salt Lake Tribune:  https://www.sltrib.com/opinion/commentary/2022/09/15/matthew-weinstein-taylor-throne/

The story of tax policy in the 2022 Legislative session is a tale of two tax cuts:

• • A large, top-heavy cut to the income tax rate from 4.95% to 4.85%. How large? $164 million. How top-heavy? 63% of it goes to the top 20% of taxpayers. all of whom have six-figure incomes. 
  • The creation of a small ($16 million, just one-tenth the size of the income tax rate cut) state-level Earned Income Tax Credit. The EITC is widely considered to be the nation's most effective anti-poverty program, since it reduces poverty by promoting work and self-sufficiency. Special recognition goes to Rep. Mike Winder, who, in his final legislative session, leaped at the opportunity to sponsor HB 307 and persuade his colleagues that 2022 was the year to make Utah the 31st state with our own EITC, something that advocates for reducing poverty have sought for decades.

The new Earned Income Tax Credit is non-refundable, which means it will not reach the lowest-income fifth of Utah workers who need it the most, including those struggling to work their way out of intergenerational poverty. About 80% of the value of the federal EITC is the refundable portion, which offsets other federal taxes paid by the lowest income workers. Most state level EITCs are also refundable, allowing them to offset the sales, gas, and property taxes paid by low-income workers to state and local governments. In Utah, the lowest income workers pay, on average, 7.5% of their incomes in those taxes, which is a higher share of their incomes than that paid in all state and local taxes by the highest income Utahns. The new nonrefundable EITC will help moderate income Utahns (the second fifth of the income distribution), primarily those earning between $30,000 and $55,000. Moderate income Utah families certainly need the help, so the creation of a Utah EITC is a great step in the direction of better tax policy. We hope that Utah will soon follow in the footsteps of other states that began with a non-refundable EITC and then decided to make it refundable.  

The income tax rate reduction continues an unfortunate pattern in recent decades of tax breaks for those who need them the least -- tax breaks that both increase inequality and starve Utah's schools of the resources they need to succeed. In 2007 we cut the top income tax rate from 7% to 5%, then in 2018 to 4.95%, now this year to 4.85%.  The income tax is the only non-regressive tax Utah has, the only one that actually lines up with Utah's income distribution. Ironically, as income inequality worsens, it is also Utah's fastest growing source of revenue, which offered Utah our best hope for seeing our education system benefit from Utah's rapid economic growth -- until we began targeting that rapidly growing revenue source for tax cuts.  

Here is a summary chart of this year's tax cuts and how they impact Utahns in each fifth of Utah's income distribution:

Source: Utah Legislative Fiscal Analyst (excluding the $15 million corporate portion of the income tax rate cut) 

Another way to think about the income tax rate reduction from 4.95% to 4.85% is to consider how it impacts a median income family of four. According to the Legislative Fiscal Analyst, such a family receives a tax cut of $98. But when you divide the $164 million price tag of the income tax rate reduction by Utah’s K-12 student population of about 675,000, then multiply by the two kids that the median income family of four has in school, you see that that average family that is gaining $98 in a tax break is giving up $485 that is now not going to be spent on their kids’ education every year. Not going to be spent on smaller class sizes or more experienced teachers or more up-to-date technology. Not going to be spent on closing the gaps in our education system between majority and minority groups and between haves and have-nots, gaps which are larger than nationally. 

It's also important to see this year's income tax rate cut in the context of decades of top-heavy tax breaks passed by the Legislature. According to the Utah State Tax Commission, Utah has been passing, on average, $100 million a year of new tax breaks for over 35 years. This now adds up to over $3.5 billion not available every year to invest in Utah's children -- their education, health care, and basic economic security. In fact, the Invest in Utah's Future Coalition has identified over $5 billion of unmet needs in a wide range of areas of public responsibility. 

For a full summary of this year's legislative actions on taxes, you can....

• Download our Powerpoint slideshow summary 
• View a video recording of our presentation "Utah Legislature's 2022 Tax Changes: What happened and how will it impact Utah children" at https://fb.watch/bpbVN8Mwms/ 

Voices for Utah Children Statement on the News that the Legislature Is Considering a Constitutional Amendment to End the Education Earmark of Income Tax Revenue:

A Constitutional Amendment Won’t Help If Utah Keeps Cutting Taxes

It is understandable that Utah legislators would want greater flexibility in how they can use public revenues. But there is a much larger problem that increased flexibility would do nothing about and would even delay solving: the chronic public revenue shortages that afflict our state following decades of tax cutting.

Utah has been cutting taxes by an average of $100 million annually for at least the last 35 years. According to Tax Commission data (see slide #8), this now adds up to about $3.5 billion in revenue not available for Utah’s annual state budget every year. As a result, public revenues are now lower than they've been in half a century relative to Utahns' incomes. The decisions in recent decades by Utah's Governors and Legislatures to give in to the tax cut temptation are at the root of Utah’s chronic revenue shortages in nearly every imaginable area of public responsibility, as documented by the Invest in Utah’s Future Coalition.

This year’s decision to pass a $164 million cut in the income tax rate from 4.95% to 4.85% (SB59 1st sub fiscal note) is an unfortunate example of this impulse toward thinking about short-term gain rather than the long-term needs of our state. This change gives a middle-class family of four a $98 tax cut, but it also means that $485 will now not be invested in that family’s two children in school. ($164 million divided by 675,000 children in Utah’s K-12 education system multiplied by two kids)

Every Utah family with children should ask the Governor and Legislative leaders, “Will you use this increased flexibility to enact even more tax cuts that deprive our children of the education that they need and deserve?” If our leaders are not prepared to answer that question unequivocally, then Utahns should know that such an amendment would just enhance budget writers' ability to "rob Peter to pay Paul" and not address the root cause of Utah’s problem.