Major Problems on choice of Child Tax Credit - Support for families with children through Income Tax system(in Japanese)

This study aims to sort out problems on implementing "Child Tax Credit (CTC)" on Income Tax system as the way to support for families with children, by surveying the following issues: (i) purposes of both current dependency exemption and proposed child tax credit, (ii) differences between income tax concession and child benefit, (iii) feasibility of refundable child tax credit, and (iv) case examples of income tax concessions for dependent child in some OECD countries. As a result of the study, I believe that the main points of discussion on implementing CTC are the followings: (1) We should assess whether CTC could be better way to "deliver financial support" to child-carer, especially compared to child benefit. (2) We should also review dependency exemption provision which allegedly reflects family structure based upon "ability to pay tax" principle. (3) Making CTC refundable can provide support even for taxpayers under tax-threshold like cash benefits, but it must require containment of additional administrative costs arising from "payment by tax authority". (4) To achieve fairer distribution and to deliver efficient support, systems and administrations of both income tax concessions and cash benefits must be comprehensively examined. I also expect that consideration of above points makes it clear whether Income Tax system and its administration really can play a roll as the way to support families with children and how Income Tax system should treat families as its significant elements.