By BRENT MARTIN
St. Joseph Post
A child care tax credit package has cleared the Missouri House early, an effort to avoid the fate of the measure last year when it ran out of time to pass during the legislative session.
St. Joseph state Rep. Brenda Shields carries the bill, hoping it can revive a child care industry that has fallen on hard times.
“Over time, people were choosing not to get into the child care business and then COVID hit. We lost over a thousand child care providers in our state to COVID. People stayed at home; they weren’t wanting to take their children to child care,” Shields tells KFEQ/St. Joseph Post. “It was a tough business during COVID.”
Only about 300 child centers have returned.
Shields says with cost skyrocketing, it has become a less attractive business.
“And you could make more money working at McDonalds and have more flexibility than running a child care five days a week out of your home.”
Shields proposes three tax credits to boost child care capacity in Missouri, either through new child care centers opening or expanding current centers.
The first credit, called the Child Care Contribution Tax Credit, would provide a 75% tax credit to those investing in or donating to a child care provider. The Employer Provided Child Care Assistance Tax Credit Act would allow a business to claim a 30% tax credit for helping employees offset the cost of child care. Shields calls the third, the Child Care Providers Tax Credit Act, perhaps the best tax break in the bill. It would allow a child care provider to claim a 30% tax credit for capital expenditures or increasing worker pay and benefits.
Each tax credit is capped at $20 million for a total of $60 million.
Shields considers that a small price to pay to offset the economic hit Missouri has taken due to a lack of child care.
“It is estimated that last year Missouri lost $1.35 billion in economic opportunity, which really would have equated to $280 million in collected tax revenue if we’d been able to meet Missouri’s full potential,” according to Shields.
Shields has high hopes if the measure passes, Missouri parents will see more child care slots open.
“It will cost the state about $60 million, but we believe that this is a tax credit that pays for itself, because we’ll be able to allow Missourians who want to be in the workforce to be able to be in the workforce.”
The measure hasn’t changed much from last year, when it also passed the Missouri House, but became victim to the Republican in-fighting that killed a lot of legislation the last two weeks of last session.
The legislation is House Bill 1488.
You can follow Brent on X @GBrentKFEQ and St. Joseph Post @StJosephPost.