topic I only received a small portion of my child tax credit. Why is that? we made less than a quarter of the 400,000 that starts reducing the child tax credit. in Deductions & credits

I only received a small portion of my child tax credit. Why is that? we made less than a quarter of the 400,000 that starts reducing the child tax credit.

actualplaystore — Tue, 03 Feb 2026 09:18:52 GMT

My wife and I filled jointly and made less than 75k yet only received 600 for our child tax credit even though we are eligible for the full 4k I've looked over the child tax credit page and it makes less and less sense every time.

Re: I only received a small portion of my child tax credit. Why is that? we made less than a quar...

JohnB5677 — Fri, 21 Feb 2025 11:57:51 GMT

The Child Tax Credit is based on the amount of tax that you owe.

If the credit exceeds your tax liability, you may be getting the Additional Child tax credit.
The maximum tax credit per qualifying child is $2,000. This will offset any taxes you may owe.
If you don’t owe any taxes, you still may qualify for the additional child tax credit. This can be up to $1,700 per qualifying child.
You can check your tax return to see what was credited.

From the left sidebar

Select Tax tools
Hint: You may have to minimize the Federal and State selections
Click Tools
A Menu will pop up
Select View tax summary
On the left panel click Preview my 1040

Some Key numbers:

11 Adjusted Gross Income
12 Deductions
15 Taxable income
16 Tax
19 Child Tax Credit
28 Additional Child Tax Credit
33 Withholdings
34 Refund
37 Amount you owe

Re: I only received a small portion of my child tax credit. Why is that? we made less than a quar...

Hal_Al — Fri, 21 Feb 2025 13:24:52 GMT

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". That is, part of the CTC may be on line 28 of form 1040 (2021- 2024) instead of line 19. The ACTC is calculated on form 8812 and is basically 15% of your earned income over $2500. The ACTC is a maximum of $1700 (2024) per child, not $2000.

If you're seeing $600 on line 19, there should be $3400 on line 28.