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Updated — latest official figures

Child Tax Credit Calculator (2026)

The credit is $2,200 a child. What reaches you can be far less — see how much cancels tax, how much comes back as a refund, and how much is simply lost.

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Your Household and Tax Year

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Only filing jointly gets the higher $400,000 threshold. Every other status, head of household included, uses $200,000.

New since July 2025. The law used to ask this only about the child; now the person claiming needs one too, and without it there is no credit at all.

They must not have turned 17 by the end of the year — a child who turns 17 in December is worth $500, not $2,200, and that is the single most common surprise on this credit.

Anyone you claim who is not a qualifying child: a 17- or 18-year-old, a college student, a parent you support, a dependent with an ITIN. Each is worth $500, and that $500 can only cancel tax — it is never refunded.

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This decides only whether the credit shrinks. Below $200,000 — $400,000 filing jointly — it does not shrink at all, so most households can enter a rough figure here.

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Wages and self-employment. This one decides the refund: it is capped at 15% of whatever you earned above $2,500, so low earnings cap the refund however many children you have.

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Enter 0 if you owe none. This is the figure that decides how much of the credit you can actually use, because most of it can only cancel tax — and it is the question every simple calculator leaves out.

Federal credit only. Some states have a child tax credit of their own on top of this one, with their own rules and their own income limits.

Your Result

Enter your details to see what the credit is actually worth to you

2026 Figures at a Glance

Rule 2026 figure
Credit for each child under 17 $2,200
Most that can be refunded, a child $1,700
Credit for each other dependent $500
Refund is 15% of earnings above $2,500
Credit starts shrinking (single, head of household) $200,000
Credit starts shrinking (married filing jointly) $400,000

This is an educational estimate based on the 2026 federal rules, not tax advice. It applies the $2,200 credit, the $500 credit for other dependents, the stepped income phase-out, and both limits on the refundable part to the figures you enter — including the income tax figure, which decides how much of a mostly nonrefundable credit you can actually use. It does not check the qualifying-child tests beyond age, does not know whether someone else is claiming the same child, does not reproduce how the IRS worksheet apportions a phase-out between the two credits, and does not include any state child tax credit. Your return is calculated on IRS Schedule 8812. The official rules, Schedule 8812 and the IRS's own eligibility assistant are at irs.gov.

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Educational Tool

Designed to help you understand how claiming age affects your benefits.

Why $2,200 a Child Is Rarely What Arrives

A credit is subtracted from tax owed, not added to a bank account. The Child Tax Credit is mostly nonrefundable, which means it can take your income tax down to zero and stop there. Only a separate refundable part — the Additional Child Tax Credit — can be paid out when the credit is bigger than the tax, and it is capped at $1,700 a child rather than $2,200. So the family that gets the whole $2,200 is the one with enough tax liability to absorb it, and a household owing no income tax cannot reach the last $500 of each child's credit at all.

$2,200 a child, less $50 for each $1,000 of income over the threshold, then split: what cancels tax, and up to $1,700 a child refunded

The Earnings Cap, and Why It Bites Hardest at the Bottom

The refundable part is 15% of whatever you earned above $2,500, and that figure is for the household — not for each child. A parent earning $10,000 has $7,500 of qualifying earnings, so their refund is capped at $1,125 whether they have one child or four. To collect the full $1,700 for a single child takes about $13,833 of earnings; for two children, about $25,167. Below that, more children do not mean more money.

This is the design working as intended rather than a quirk: the credit is tied to work, so it rises with earnings and reaches its full value only well above the poverty line. It also means the households with the least income get the least from a credit named after children, which is the criticism the design attracts and the reason the figure this page shows can be so far below the one in the headlines.

The Age Cliff, and the $500 Consolation

A qualifying child must not have turned 17 by the end of the tax year. There is no taper: a child who turns 17 on 31 December is worth $500 for that whole year, not $2,200, and the family loses $1,700 for a birthday. It is the sharpest edge in the credit and it surprises people every year, because a 17-year-old is in every other respect still a dependent child.

The $500 that replaces it is the Credit for Other Dependents, and it covers more than teenagers: a college student you support, a parent living with you, a disabled adult child, a dependent who has an ITIN rather than a Social Security number. It is entirely nonrefundable, so it is worth $500 to a family with tax to cancel and nothing at all to a family without.

What the 2025 Law Changed

The One Big Beautiful Bill Act, signed in July 2025, did three things that matter here. It raised the credit from $2,000 to $2,200 a child and indexed it to inflation. It made permanent what had been due to expire at the end of 2025 — the higher credit, the $200,000 and $400,000 thresholds, and the $500 credit for other dependents — so families are no longer planning around a cliff. And it added a Social Security number requirement for the taxpayer.

That last one is the change most likely to catch someone out. The law already required the child to have a Social Security number valid for employment; now the person claiming needs one too, and on a joint return at least one spouse must have it. A household filing with an ITIN that used to receive this credit no longer can, and no amount of income or number of children changes that.

Important Disclaimer

This is an educational estimate based on the 2026 federal rules, not tax advice. It applies the $2,200 credit, the $500 credit for other dependents, the stepped income phase-out, and both limits on the refundable part to the figures you enter — including the income tax figure, which decides how much of a mostly nonrefundable credit you can actually use. It does not check the qualifying-child tests beyond age, does not know whether someone else is claiming the same child, does not reproduce how the IRS worksheet apportions a phase-out between the two credits, and does not include any state child tax credit. Your return is calculated on IRS Schedule 8812. irs.gov

Is This Calculator Accurate?

The rules it applies are exact: the $2,200 credit, the $500 for other dependents, the stepped phase-out of $50 per $1,000 or part of $1,000, the $1,700 refundable cap and the 15%-above-$2,500 earnings cap are all published figures, and the constants reproduce the published points at which the credit disappears — $244,000 single and $444,000 joint for one child. What it depends on is the income tax figure you enter, because that decides how much of a mostly nonrefundable credit you can use, and most people do not know it before their return is prepared. It does not reproduce how the IRS worksheet apportions a phase-out between the child credit and the other-dependent credit, which matters only if you have both and a high income; it does not check the qualifying-child tests beyond age, or know whether someone else is claiming the same child; and it does not add any state credit.