The Tax Cuts and Jobs Act, or TCJA, of 2017, temporarily boosted the maximum child tax credit to $2,000 from $1,000, an increase that will expire after 2025 without action from Congress.

If enacted, the House bill would make the $2,000 credit permanent and raise the cap to $2,500 from 2025 through 2028. After 2028, the credit’s highest value would revert to $2,000, and be indexed for inflation.

However, the plan does “nothing for the 17 million children that are left out of the current $2,000 credit,” said Kris Cox, director of federal tax policy with the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities’ federal fiscal policy division.

Typically, very low-income families with kids don’t owe federal taxes, which means they can’t claim the full child tax credit. 

Plus, under the House proposal, both parents must have a Social Security number if filing jointly and claiming the tax break for an eligible child.

“This bill is taking the child tax credit away from 4.5 million children who are U.S. citizens or lawfully present,” Cox said.

A bipartisan House bill passed in February 2024 aimed to expand access to the child tax credit and retroactively boosted the refundable portion for 2023, which would have impacted families during the 2024 filing season. 

The bill failed in the Senate in August, but Republicans expressed interest in revisiting the issue.

At the time of the vote, Sen. Mike Crapo, R-Idaho, described it as a “blatant attempt to score political points.” Crapo, who is now chairman of the Senate Finance Committee, said in August that Senate Republicans have concerns about the policy, but are willing to negotiate a “child tax credit solution that a majority of Republicans can support.”

Although House Republicans previously supported the expansion for lower-earners, the current plan “shifts directions and focuses the benefits on middle and high-income families,” Maag said. 

House Republicans have advanced trillions of tax breaks as part of President Donald Trump‘s economic package.

After debating the legislation overnight, the House Ways and Means Committee, which oversees tax, passed its portion of the legislation on Wednesday morning in a 26-19 party line vote.

But the battle over the deduction for state and local taxes, known as SALT, remains in limbo.

The text released Monday afternoon would raise the SALT cap to $30,000 for those with a modified adjusted gross income of $400,000 or less. But some House lawmakers still want to see a higher limit before the full House vote.

While the SALT deduction is a key priority for certain lawmakers in high-tax states, the current $10,000 cap was added to help fund the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act, or TCJA, of 2017.

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Following the vote, House Ways and Means Committee Chairman Jason Smith, R-Mo., said in a statement that Ways and Means Republicans will “continue to work closely with President Trump and our House colleagues to get the One, Big, Beautiful Bill that delivers on the President’s agenda to his desk as soon as possible.”   

The full House vote could come as early as next week. But the legislation could see significant changes in the Senate, experts say.

If enacted as drafted, Republicans could also deliver no tax on tips and tax-free overtime pay. But questions remain about the details of these provisions.  

Rather than cutting taxes on Social Security, the plan includes an extra $4,000 deduction for older Americans, which may not fully cover Social Security income, according to some experts.

The $4,000 deduction costs $90 billion over 10 years, compared to $1 trillion for exempting Social Security income from tax, Garrett Watson, director of policy analysis at the Tax Foundation, wrote in a post on X Tuesday.

“Tax filers with no other income sources outside of Social Security would typically see little benefit, while others may see bigger gains from this idea,” he wrote in that thread. 

The House Ways and Means bill also extends the maximum child tax credit of $2,000 enacted via the TCJA, and temporarily raises the tax break to $2,500 per child through 2028.

However, some policy experts have criticized the proposed credit design since lower earners typically can’t claim the full amount.

The proposed legislation “did nothing for the 17 million children that are left out of the current $2,000 credit,” Kris Cox, director of federal tax policy with the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities’ federal fiscal policy division, told CNBC.

Social Security beneficiaries are at risk of receiving a smaller benefit if they’ve fallen behind on their student loans.

The Trump administration recently announced it would move to offset defaulted student loan borrowers’ federal benefits, and warned that payments could be garnished as soon as June.

That involuntary collection activity could have serious consequences on those who rely on the benefits to pay most, if not all, of their bills, consumer advocates say.

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There are some 2.9 million people age 62 and older with federal student loans, as of the first quarter of 2025, according to Education Department data. That is a 71% increase from 2017, when there were 1.7 million such borrowers, according to the data.

More than 450,000 borrowers in that age group are in default on their federal student loans and likely to be receiving Social Security benefits, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau found.

Here’s what borrowers need to know.

The best way to avoid the offset of your Social Security benefits is to get current on your loans, said Betsy Mayotte, president of The Institute of Student Loan Advisors, a nonprofit.

You can contact the government’s Default Resolution Group and pursue several different avenues to get out of default, including enrolling in an income-driven repayment plan.

“If Social Security is their only income, their payment under those plans would likely be zero,” Mayotte said.