Donald Trump is supposedly going to do something about childcare costs, because Ivanka. But what exactly does the precious daughter have in mind? Shockingly, it’s a big tax cut for rich people! The plan is that families pay for child care, then get a tax refund at the end of the year. That means that if you can’t afford to pay a lot for care, you don’t get a lot back—there’s no help in paying for high-quality care up front, which means that childcare quality stays unequal and then that inequality is used as a reason to give a lot of money back to people who don’t need it.
The Center for American Progress has done an analysis of county-level election results, identifying the counties that swung hard toward Trump, moving 15 points or more from the 2012 vote. And guess what—under Trump’s plan, families in those counties wouldn’t get enough help to buy dinner at McDonald’s.
According to the analysis, a typical family with two young children in Trump swing counties would only net $5.55 under Trump’s plan, even after spending $6,037 on child care. To get a bigger net benefit, a middle-class family would have to spend much more on child care than they can currently afford. Since the benefit comes at the end of the year on a tax return, only families that can already afford expensive child care will be able to effectively deduct the expenses. The Trump plan is too little, too late—it asks middle-class families to pay thousands of dollars in child care costs up front and wait until the following year for a tiny refund.
CAP contrasts that with the high-income Upper East Side of Manhattan, not far from Trump Tower:
The typical family of four with two young children on the Upper East Side earns about $295,000 a year. A family with that much income, deducting the average cost of child care for two children in New York, would receive a net benefit of $7,329 from the Trump child care plan. Even wealthier families would get an even bigger tax cut, since the Trump child care tax deduction is available to those earning up to half a million dollars.
So if you’re a struggling single mom who needs childcare to get a job, but needs a job to afford childcare, you get nothing under Trump’s plan. If you’re a high-income family that’s already sending your child to an accredited daycare center with a teacher for every three babies and a stimulating curriculum even for six-month-olds, congratulations, you’d get back a bundle.