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Comment by mupuff1234 | Hacker News Reader

Or you could just give the tax break to the parents instead of creating another corporate tax loophole that will most likely be abused.

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Individual parents aren’t generally in a position to open a daycare and make a meaningful difference in the supply of childcare. Employers may be able to do so.

give the parents the money and let them decide what to do with it

All day cares will suddenly increase in price to the tune of the tax break.

BLS data[0] indicate over 30% of married couples with children have a stay-at-home parent, and census data[1] indicate over 20% of childcare is provided by a non-parent relative. So family providing care is quite normal and close to the majority of the supply of childcare.

[0] https://www.bls.gov/news.release/famee.t04.htm

[1] https://www.census.gov/library/stories/2023/11/child-care.ht...

A tax break only helps people who are paying enough in taxes for it to matter and when it’s well calibrated to match what daycare costs. It would generally be better for the government to provide daycare because they have much better scale and consistency on funding, employment – daycare employees are notoriously underpaid because it’s such a high overhead business – and especially real estate. Using state buildings and getting the workers on healthcare plans which have better economies of scale would be a lot more sustainable economically than having a bunch of small businesses with far less leverage trying to do it on a smaller scale.

> A tax break only helps people who are paying enough in taxes for it to matter

No, tax deductions help higher rate taxpayers more, but "tax breaks" is a more broad/relaxed term that includes tax credits. Tax credits benefit everyone who files taxes and meets the criteria for the credit.

> It would generally be better for the government to provide daycare

Eh, that is kind of a wholly different argument. In some ways the credit is obviously better (maybe it frees up one partner who wants to to stay-at-home parent), and it can be used more flexibly than a government-provided care program, even if you assume arguendo that the government program would be good and/or good value.

If you’re going to be that pedantic, be sure to specify that you mean refundable tax credits – and then perhaps acknowledge the second half of the compound statement you’re replying to.

Or throw away the entire bullshit that is the US tax code and start over.

You could, either works.

Neither way really impacts fertility rate if that's the goal. Many countries, esp in west and north Europe, have already found out that you can't pay people to have kids.

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