New York Weighs New Help for High Child Care Costs
New York may allow the parents of young children to defer a piece of their state income taxes to help cover the cost of child care.
The novel proposal, introduced as legislation this past week in Albany, is intended to address an expense that challenges nearly every family budget but gets far less attention than saving for college or retirement.
Child care in New York costs more than $10,000 a year on average, rivaling the cost of housing as the largest financial burden on the parents of young children. And compared with other big expenses such as housing, health care or higher education, government does relatively little to help.
The proposal, from state Sen. Daniel Squadron, D-Brooklyn, would allow parents to defer up to $2,000 of their taxes per year to help defray the costs of child care. The taxes would still have to be paid once the child is of school age, but parents would have 10 years to pay the full amount, and no interest would be added.
Credit
We need a credit, not a deferrment.
Dovber
This is beyond stupid on many levels:
1. How would DEFERRING $2,000 help with an expense of >$10,000?
2. For people who aren’t going to send their child to public school (like us Frum people), tuition only goes up. So instead of me spending $2,000 now when I can possibly squeeze it in, let me spend that $2,000 on something else, and when elementary school tuition kicks in five years later, remind me I suddenly owe the deferred $2,000 when I don’t have the money anymore.
3. Just another way to complicate our already complicated tax code.
4. If the state can afford to lose whatever the time-value of this money is, why can’t they just credit that amount to parents up front?