By BRENT MARTIN
St. Joseph Post
An attempt to ease the child care crisis in Missouri might not make it through the legislative process.
State Rep. Brenda Shields of St. Joseph succeeded in moving her measure through the Missouri House, but it is stuck in the Senate. Shields’ bill would provide tax credits to businesses helping employees cover child care costs.
“We have a workforce crisis in our state, which means we have a childcare crisis, because many people can’t go to work because they can’t find quality, reliable, affordable child care for their children,” Shields tells KFEQ/St. Joseph Post. “So, we are tackling it in a different way than any other state has tried to tackle it before.”
House Bill 870 would allow child care providers to claim a tax credit of up to 30% of their expenses. Child care providers would also be allowed to keep the withholding tax of their employees.
The proposal limits the total tax credits to be issued by the state to $20 million annually.
Shields Missouri has to increase child care options if the state economy is to grow.
“Businesses tell us that they have a problem hiring people and they say the number one reason, 58% say, that child care is the issue,” according to Shields. “This allows businesses to put skin in the game and be the first one to put skin in the game to help solve the problem and once they put skin the game the state will follow suit and make sure that we have child care.”
Shields says the number of childcare providers hasn’t bounced back since the pandemic.
“We lost a significant amount of our child cares during the pandemic when people were staying at home and only about three percent of those child cares have come back and that is just in the state of Missouri alone,” Shields says. “But it is an issue. If you read nationally, child care is an issue across the nation.”
The bill breezed to passage in the Missouri House 133-20 in early April. It initially passed out of a Senate committee, but now sits in the Senate Fiscal Oversight Committee.
A 2021 U.S. Chamber of Commerce Foundation report estimated that Missouri loses more than $1.3 billion annually as a result of childcare shortages.
The Missouri legislative session ends at six o'clock this evening.
Missourinet contributed to this article.