People who use Married Filing Separately (MFS) are not eligible for the Earned Income Credit. Your income is too high for EIC, so that statement is mostly for others reading this post.
The child tax credit (CTC) is limited to your tax liability. The CTC is a non-refundable credit and can only
reduce your income tax to 0, It can not help you beyond eliminating your tax liability.
But, if you have more than $2500 of earned income, some or all of it is usually
given back to you thru the "Additional Child tax credit" (ACTC)**. However earned income excluded under the foreign income exclusion does not count for the ACTC.
**That is,
part of the CTC may be on line 17 of form 1040 instead of line 12. The
ACTC is calculated on form 8812 and
is basically 15% of your earned income over $2500. The ACTC is a maximum
of $1400 per child (not $2000).
