The Child Tax Credit (CTC) is one of several tax credits designed to benefit families with children, delivering over $100 billion a year to US families through a combination of tax reductions and direct payments. The recently enacted One Big Beautiful Bill Act of 2025 (OBBBA) increased the maximum CTC benefit to $2,200 beginning in 2025. Prior to OBBBA, the maximum CTC was $2,000, a level set by the 2017 Tax Cuts and Jobs Act (TCJA), which also expanded eligibility to higher-income families. This brief provides an overview of the CTC, focusing on the reforms introduced by TCJA that OBBBA preserved and expanded upon.

Data summary

• The Tax Cuts and Jobs Act of 2017 (TCJA) introduced several expansions to the Child Tax Credit (CTC), including doubling the maximum benefit to $2,000 per child and expanding eligibility for higher-income families. Those expansions had been scheduled to sunset at the end of 2025, but the recently enacted One Big Beautiful Bill Act (OBBBA) permanently increased the maximum benefit to $2,200 and set it to rise with inflation.
• Post-TCJA, aggregate CTC benefits claimed more than doubled — from $51.4 billion to $117.7 billion — between 2017 and 2018, mostly from a rise in nonrefundable CTC benefits.
• Aggregate CTC benefits rose across the income distribution, with middle- and high-income families receiving the largest increases. Aggregate benefits for families making between $25,000 and $50,000 rose from $16.0 billion in 2017 to $30.4 billion in 2018; those making $100,000 to $200,000 saw an increase from $5.2 billion to $26.4 billion.
• Average refundable benefits rose from $1,336 to $1,772, while nonrefundable benefits increased from $1,218 to $2,070.
• Aggregate CTC benefits increased at similar levels across states, roughly doubling in each.