Sponsors
The bill extends the child tax credit to stillbirths, giving grieving parents financial relief and easing some paperwork, at the cost of modest additional federal spending and added administrative/verification complexity for the IRS and taxpayers.
Parents who experience a stillbirth can claim the child tax credit for that loss, giving those families up to the standard credit amount for the tax year (reducing tax liability or increasing refunds).
Grieving families receive the same tax benefit they would have received if a child had died after birth, improving financial support during bereavement.
Removes SSN/TIN documentation barriers for stillborn children, simplifying the process for affected taxpayers and reducing certain administrative burdens when claiming the credit.
Exempting SSN/TIN requirements and the statute's definitional choices (e.g., gestation threshold, phrasing) could create verification challenges and administrative disputes for the IRS and taxpayers, increasing audit or documentation workload and causing edge-case eligibility disagreements.
Expanding a refundable or partially refundable tax credit to cover stillbirths modestly increases federal outlays, which could raise deficit pressures if not offset.
Based on analysis of 2 sections of legislative text.
Permits the child tax credit to be claimed for stillbirths (IUFD at 20+ weeks) by treating the unborn child as a qualifying child and waiving certain ID-number rules.
Allows families to claim the federal child tax credit for stillbirths by treating a fetus that experienced a spontaneous intrauterine fetal demise (IUFD) after at least 20 weeks of gestation as a qualifying child for tax purposes. It also waives certain Social Security number and taxpayer-identification-number rules when the unborn child would otherwise have been eligible for those numbers. The change takes effect for taxable years ending after the date of enactment and requires the IRS to apply the child tax credit rules to qualifying stillbirths despite the usual requirement that a child be born alive.
Introduced January 21, 2025 by H. Morgan Griffith · Last progress January 21, 2025