Free tool · United States
Child Tax Credit Calculator
Full credit up to $400,000 of income.
Age at the end of the tax year.
Older children, parents, anyone who does not qualify above.
Up to $3,400 of it could come back as a refund if it is more than you owe.
- Before income
- $4,400
- Phase-out
- −$0
- Nothing left at
- $487,001
Figures from the IRS, checked . They change each tax year. Your actual payment also depends on your tax liability, your earned income, and whether each dependant meets the residency and support tests, which this page does not ask about.
The phase-out is a staircase, not a slope
The credit falls by $50 for every $1,000 of income above your threshold or fraction of one. That last phrase is the whole difference. A household a single dollar over $400,000 loses a full $50, not five cents, and the credit then holds flat until the next thousand ticks over.
Most calculators model this as a smooth 5% and are wrong at every boundary. This one steps.
The thresholds do not move
The credit itself is indexed to inflation. The $200,000 and $400,000 thresholds are not, and have not changed since 2018. So the phase-out reaches a little further into the middle of the income distribution every year without any law being passed, which is worth knowing if your household is anywhere near it.
Questions
- How much is the Child Tax Credit?
- $2,200 per qualifying child under 17 at the end of the tax year, and $500 for each other dependant who does not meet that test. The One Big Beautiful Bill Act made both permanent, so unlike most tax figures these are not scheduled to lapse.
- At what income does it start to shrink?
- $200,000 for single and head of household filers, $400,000 filing jointly. Those thresholds are not indexed to inflation, so they stay where they are while wages rise, which quietly pulls more households into the phase-out each year.
- How fast does it phase out?
- By $50 for every $1,000 of income above the threshold, or fraction of one. The "fraction" matters: a household one dollar over loses a full $50, not a few cents, because the reduction moves in steps rather than smoothly.
- Do I get it as a refund if I owe no tax?
- Partly. Up to $1,700 per child can come back as a refund through the Additional Child Tax Credit, and only if you have at least $2,500 of earned income. The rest reduces tax you owe and does not pay out on its own.
- Why does this page not tell me my refund?
- The refundable part is capped by your earned income and by how much credit is left after it offsets what you owe, and that depends on your whole return. This page works out the credit; your filing works out the refund.
A credit arrives once. The bills do not.
A few thousand dollars landing in one deposit is the easiest money in the year to lose track of, because nothing about it is monthly. Zero Budget gives every dollar a job before the month starts, including the ones that arrive all at once.
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Room starts when you open the account, not when you turn 18. That catches people.