 There's the 20,000 it's maxed out 25,000 it should be at 5904 so 25,000 25,000 25,000 it's at the 5904 and then if I go down to the 30,000 4851 30,000 30,000 is over here 30,000 4851 and so on so I think I Got those plot points. Hopefully mostly right so you can get an idea of the visual chart here All right, so so that's the general idea now if I added let's go back to the 20,000 where it's maxed out. Let's go back to the 20,000 so it's maxed out 20,000 Credit maxed out at the 6935 and let's add another kid. Why not? Why not at this point? No, I don't even know these kids are already driving me crazy one more is not gonna hurt All right, so now we got four kids still head of household and four kids over here It's just ridiculous a madhouse only earning 20,000 so I barely got you know the money to hold on to these kids But I'm still at the 6935 because you don't get any more benefit from the EIC Above that threshold now now if now if they were married like if I if I go to married the threshold will change So you can imagine another curve but it's not exactly doubling everything because you still have the maximum at the 6935 and You're only having a maximum agi so you can imagine this whole bell curve Basically kind of or whatever whatever you want this curve basically shifting to the right would be kind of kind of the idea so that The maximum income level You'd get would be here instead of here, but the still you have the max here So you can imagine the situation that if you had two people that got married and let's say they had like Like one has two kids and one has one kid Or something like that then they could be maximizing the credit of 3733 and 6164 between the two of them and if they got married then they would have like three kids which would bring the maximum credit up To to here but it but you'd probably end up in a worse or situation even then Even though you're going up to another tier level on the married level because of the because of the income thresholds But but notice if you had like one had two kids six one six four plus three seven three three and you're maxing it out that would be at the nine thousand nine thousand eight 97 if you're maximizing these two out and then if you were married and you got three kids Then it would be at the six nine three five, but it gets even gets worse if for example You had you had two people head of household that were maximizing the six thousand one sixty four times two Six one six four times two and then you get married You're losing the benefit from the earned income tax credit of one kid all together Right because you don't get any of that credit and then if you had two people that have three or more kids Right if they had three kids. Let's say they had more, you know We'll say they both had three kids You could just say okay. Well if they get married do they get a benefit for six kids now? No, it's still capped at three kids So then you could see that would be a big disincentive you would think on the married side of things So let's just see let's just kind of get an idea of that if I was to say okay There's three four kids three kids doesn't matter For the single filer. So let's say we had let's write it down here. We've got head of household Head of household three or more or More kids and we're gonna say then the income is 20,000 and we said the earned income credit is gonna be 6 935 6 935. Is that what we said it was? Yeah, and then we said that the Refund according to this calculation just the total refund for this example because that includes the child tax credit one is nine five six zero So nine five six nine five six zero Okay, and then if I multiply that times two I imagined two people filing head of household their income total would be 20,000 earned income tax credit between the two of them filing separately 13870 and their refund between the two of them would be nineteen one twenty. So now what if they were married? married We know the income would go up Doubling it to 40 What happens to the earn income credit and the refund? So let's do that Let's go back on over and imagine we had two people That are in this scenario with three or more kids and whatnot and then they got married and So now we're gonna have six kids. I got four here, but it doesn't matter after three anyway So let's add six kids married couple Alright, so hopefully I got it all correct here. So now we got married filing Statuses married filing joint. You got you got misses and mister and miss and miss Dan Anderson Now we have to have a whole another statement for our dependence over here because there's too many to fit on the lines They provided but we got one two three four five six kids now Six kids and we're gonna say okay Then forty thousand of income because we had two people that had twenty thousand so they were maximizing their their their benefit before from the earned income tax credit at six nine three five and The standard deduction doubles like you would normally think you know something would double if married The tax rates are adjusted for married But this the credit here is now calculating at the 4036 for the earned income tax credit. So 4036 4036 now remember this the maximum tax credit Was six nine three five that they were both getting before When they had three or more kids but had twenty thousand of income because the forty thousand income They did the incomes don't double right so you can imagine this curve kind of shifting to the right But it doesn't like doesn't like Double so they're not so they're actually getting less than the maximum credit Even though they got six kids now and and the forty thousand of income married were which as opposed to 20 and 20 before and So the that comes out to nine six six one so nine six six one six six one So you can see Again, you could come up with some substantial differences between two people filing 40,000 income between the two of them twenty twenty each and the earned income tax credit You know could have a significant difference between if they got if they got married and it's kind of a sad situation that the The allocation of the kids and whatnot I mean that could be a significant difference on The income could have some influence on you know The whole decision-making process But it is what it is So you want to be so you want to be aware if like if you're in that kind of situation then you got to think That there's gonna be tax, you know The tax consequences could be kind of significant and you want to make sure you're kind of mapping them out So that so it's not like a shock If you get married and you're like hey wait a second this came When it is a lot less than we would have got as Two separate head of household Filers and again on the higher income side of things if you don't have those refundable credits Usually getting married is a benefit. It's not disincentivized by the tax code because because the standard deduction actually doubles If you got married which usually the incomes don't exactly double because if on the upper income side of things because usually one Person possibly has more income than the other because they're splitting up the house and what not and then on page number two The tax rates usually are reflected as you would kind of expect if you had twice as much income So that it doesn't disincentivize a marriage situation But for some reason these well, it's hard to figure all this stuff out But the refundable tax credits kind of create weird incentives So that is that also remember of course that That the other income such as schedule C income instead of W2 income would also be earned income and And have a similar function of it increasing and decreasing according to the curve as schedule C income goes up and down business income and other income that's that's more passive income like Investment income does not have an effect on that curve of income and if there's too much investment income you can actually Lose the earned income tax credit because if you had a significant amount of interest income and dividend income that would indicate You got a significant amount of money in the checking account or and or in the In investments, so you would think you wouldn't need the earned income credit in that case