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The earned income tax credit, or EITC, is a tax break for low- to moderate-income workers, which increases based on family size.
It's a fully refundable credit, which means certain filers can receive the full amount, even with zero taxes owed. For tax year 2025, the maximum credit is worth up to $8,046 for filers with three or more qualifying children.
However, about 1 in 5 eligible taxpayers don't claim this "valuable" credit, the IRS said in a January news release.
For 2024 returns, roughly 23.5 million filers collectively received about $68.5 billion from the EITC, and the average amount was $2,916, according to the IRS.
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EITC "eligibility requirements are complex," national taxpayer advocate Erin Collins wrote in her 2026 legislative recommendations to Congress.
"As a result, millions of eligible taxpayers fail to claim the EITC, while other taxpayers claim amounts for which they are not eligible," she wrote.
EITC eligibility is based on your earnings, tax filing status and number of qualifying children, if any. The adjusted gross income limits rise based on your filing status and qualifying children.
For 2025, single filers with no children can make up to $19,104, while the same filers could earn up to $61,555 with three or more qualifying children. The AGI limits are higher for married couples filing together, ranging from $26,214 for no kids to $68,675 with three or more children.
How the EITC impacts tax refunds
Since many lower earners don't incur federal income tax, they don't benefit from nonrefundable credits, which filers subtract from taxes owed, experts say.
But the "EITC provides them with this tax credit in the form of a refund," Kris Cox, director of federal tax policy with the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities' federal fiscal policy division, told CNBC.
By law, the IRS must hold refunds claiming the EITC or the refundable part of the child tax credit, known as the additional child tax credit or ACTC, until Feb. 15.
So far, the agency's filing season statistics releases, including the average refund amount, haven't yet included millions of payments with the EITC or ACTC.
The first IRS release to include these payments will be on Friday, and should include data through Feb. 20. As a result, the average refund size reported on Feb. 27 is "expected to be higher," according to the IRS.
How Trump's 'big beautiful bill' impacted the EITC
Typically, the EITC adjusts every year via the IRS' annual inflation updates. But changes weren't made via Trump's "big beautiful bill," according to Cox from the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities.
"There was a big opportunity for the bill this past year to really boost the incomes of people with low pay," she said. But "those provisions did not make it into the bill."
The House-passed version of Trump's legislation included a provision to "avoid duplicative and other erroneous [EITC] claims," which could have required precertification for qualifying children. But the measure was blocked by the Senate parliamentarian. If enacted, the provision could have reduced errors, but made the EITC harder to claim, experts say.
