EITC: Who Qualifies and How Much Can You Get?
Last reviewed: September 2026
The Earned Income Tax Credit is for people who work and earn a modest amount. It is refundable, which means it can pay out even when you owe no tax.
The short answer
The amount depends on your earned income, your filing status and how many qualifying children you have. It rises with earnings up to a maximum, holds there, then phases out. For tax year 2026 the maximum is $8,231 for a filer with three or more qualifying children.
What counts as earned income
Earned income is what you get for working: wages, salary, tips, and net earnings from self-employment. Interest, dividends, pensions, unemployment compensation and Social Security are not earned income. That distinction does most of the work in deciding whether someone qualifies at all.
Filing status and qualifying children
Married couples generally have to file jointly to claim it. The credit is larger, and reaches further up the income scale, for each qualifying child up to three - a child has to meet tests for relationship, age, residency and joint return.
Filers with no qualifying children can still claim a much smaller credit, subject to age limits that filers with children do not face.
Why the amount varies so much
The credit is not a flat payment. It phases in as a percentage of your earnings, reaches a maximum, stays flat over a band, and then phases out as income rises. Two people with the same number of children and very different earnings can get very different amounts, and someone earning slightly more can receive slightly less.
For tax year 2026 the maximum is $664 with no qualifying children, $4,427 with one, $7,316 with two, and $8,231 with three or more.
Investment income
There is a limit on how much investment income you can have and still claim the credit. Exceeding it disqualifies you outright, regardless of how low your earned income is. The current limit is published by the IRS and applied by our calculator.
Which year the figures belong to
The figures above are for tax year 2026, set in Revenue Procedure 2025-32. That is the return you file in 2027. Amounts for the return you filed this year were set for tax year 2025 and are different. Checking which year a figure belongs to is worth doing every time, because the numbers change annually and are widely quoted without the year attached.
What our calculator works out
Our calculator applies the published phase-in rate, maximum, threshold and phase-out rate for your filing status and number of qualifying children to the earned income you enter, and shows where in the curve you land.
What this does not tell you
This is an estimate, not an IRS determination. The IRS decides what you receive, using your full return.
The calculator works from earned income, filing status and the number of qualifying children. It does not test whether a particular child meets the relationship, age, residency and joint-return rules, and it cannot see anything else on your return that might affect the result.
Official sources
- IRS - Earned Income Tax Credit
- IRS - EITC income limits and maximum credit amounts
- IRS - Tax year 2026 inflation adjustments
- IRS - Publication 596, Earned Income Credit
What you can do next
Work out an estimate, then check the child tax credit as well: households that qualify for one often qualify for the other, and they are claimed on the same return.
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