The Impact of the Expanded Child Tax Credit in Oklahoma

In 2021, the American Rescue Plan Act temporarily expanded the federal child tax credit (CTC) for one year, including some families formerly ineligible for the credit. This could lift 59,000 children in Oklahoma out of poverty annually, cutting the state's 13 percent child poverty rate roughly in half (Acs and Werner 2021). The IRS sent payments automatically to people who had filed tax returns in either 2019 or 2020 or who had claimed an economic impact payment. Treasury data show which zip codes in Tulsa County include children that are unlikely to have received a CTC automatically.