During the spring of 2011, I was a tax policy analyst working in the Michigan Legislature.

I stood on the state House floor, watching the voting board as members voted on a significant piece of tax legislation that cut taxes on businesses and increased taxes on individuals.

The bill passed on slim party lines.

One of the casualties of that bill was the Michigan Earned Income Tax Credit (EITC), which was slashed from the 20% credit to merely 6%, making it one of the lowest state credits in the nation.

As a tax nerd who believes in adequate and equitable tax systems, it was one of the hardest votes I’ve witnessed. Raising taxes on working families with low wages so that businesses could see a tax cut was wrong.

But, last week, Michigan saw that wrong righted — and then some — when Gov. Gretchen Whitmer signed into law House Bill 4001, which included a boost to the state EITC from 6% to 30% of the federal credit.

I often joke that the EITC — now also called the Working Families Tax Credit — has been a passion of mine and a significant part of my work for my entire career. But it’s honestly the truth.

I started with the Legislature in 2009, a year after the Michigan EITC became effective and the year it was bumped from its initial 10% match rate to 20% of the federal credit. After the 2011 cut, I’d spend the next decade working to restore and even expand the credit.

And it’s not surprising that I would dedicate so much time to something with such a wonky name that folks don’t understand what it is.

The Working Families Tax Credit, or EITC, is a tax credit for working families with low to moderate wages. Signed into law at the federal level by Michigan’s own President Gerald R. Ford, it has been expanded several times and supported by Democrats and Republicans alike. Michigan’s state credit was enacted by Gov. Jennifer Granholm after nearly unanimous support in both of Michigan’s legislative chambers, which were under Republican control at the time.

Decades of research have shown the benefits of the EITC.

It offsets the high taxes that families with low incomes pay in other ways, such as property and sales taxes, and helps them make ends meet. It allows families to pay for daily necessities, like groceries, housing, child care, or transportation, and has positive, long-lasting benefits on children in families who receive it. It helps support racial equity in our tax structure, as people of color are disproportionately represented in low-paying jobs due to past and present discrimination in workplace and educational policies. And it is one of the most effective tools to pull people out of poverty.

Those benefits were felt by more than 730,000 Michigan families — more than 15% of Michigan’s households — in 2019, including about 1 million — nearly half — of Michigan’s children. Families in every county — urban and rural alike — and in every legislative district received that after-tax bump in in scomes. While average credits are typically higher in urban areas, rural communities see higher take up, meaning a higher percentage of rural households qualify for the credit.

The bill Gov. Whitmer signed into law last week included, in part, a significant expansion of our state EITC. The average state credit in 2019 was $150. Had this been 30%, as under the legislation signed by Whitmer, working families would have received an average credit close to $750 — which could have paid for 10 months of internet, a month of child care or health care coverage, or even to pay down debt.

In Alpena, Alcona, Montmorency, and Presque Isle counties alone, a total of over 4,800 families received an average Earned Income Tax Credit of around $127 in 2019, returning over $608,000 to the local economies. With the credit at 30%, those Alpena-area families would see an average credit of around $630 and local economies would see over $3 million.

And, based on analysis by the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, the EITC increase will pull an additional 32,000 people — 16,800 of them children — above the supplemental poverty measure. That will also put more money back into our local communities, as families that receive the credit tend to spend it at stores and businesses where they live and work.

This win is over a decade in the making, and I’m celebrating alongside hundreds of advocates and organizations across the political spectrum who have pushed for an increase to the credit.

With the signing of HB 4001, the governor and legislative leadership showed a true commitment to putting families first.

Rachel Richards is fiscal policy and government relations director at the Michigan League for Public Policy.