Earned Tax Credit (ETIC)

The Earned Income Tax Credit (ETIC) is considered one of the largest and least controversial welfare programs. The ETIC sprouted out of the 1960s War on Poverty as an answer towards concerns over the increasing number of welfare programs of that era. The program has evolved from an initially modest tax credit into the U.S. government’s largest and most important poverty prevention tools. This brief background paper will describe ETIC’s history, eligibility requirements, and the positive/negative effects of the tax credit.
ETIC was enacted in 1975 by Senator Russell Long. Long worked to create a program that would counter the increasingly popular Negative Income Tax (NIT). The NIT was viewed as a “universal” anti-poverty program that guaranteed