The counterplan gives a functional guaranteed income by reforming pre-existing systems to target communities better while avoiding federal economic litigation and bureaucracy which solves the aff AND is mutually exclusive.

Expanding State Earned Income Tax Credit The federal Earned Income Tax Credit (EITC) is a refundable tax credit for working families created in 1975 by the Ford Administration. Its aim was to shield low-wage workers from the regressive effects of rising payroll taxes and to provide an additional income boost for workers near or below the poverty line.43 While the majority of an individual’s EITC comes from their federal tax return, thirty states, the District of Columbia, and a few municipalities44 have established their own EITCs to supplement the federal credit.45 Similar to the recently expanded federal Child Tax Credit, what distinguishes the federal EITC from many other credits in the tax code is its ”refundability,” meaning the full amount of the credit is given to low-income workers as cash, rather than merely reducing their tax liability. In 2018, the federal EITC lifted roughly 5.6 million people out of poverty, including about 3 million children. A state approach that modifies and bolsters a state EITC to achieve a functional guaranteed income for low-income people is an attractive proposition because it both comes with an existing mechanism to get payments to recipients, and those payments have a stronger basis for exemption from consideration as income in other benefits programs like SNAP and TANF. Unfortunately, the current federal EITC framework does not provide the full credit to households that do not meet the minimum threshold of earnings to qualify, excluding the lowest wage earning and non-wage earning households. Additionally, some groups like unpaid caregivers and domestic workers, as well as immigrants who file taxes with an Individual Tax ID number are not able to access these valuable credits. A state could create an efficient avenue to a functional guaranteed income for a large swath of a state’s population by enacting reforms to the state EITC that: Is fully refundable, ensuring that extremely low- and no-income families are eligible, Expands the state’s federal match rate to provide recipients with greater support, Raises income eligibility thresholds to extend eligibility to some middle-income earners, and Provide access to immigrants and other previously excluded groups.46