2026 Child Tax Credit Calculator

Background.

A Child Tax Credit calculator has to model two credits at once, because the CTC is only partly a straightforward dollar-for-dollar tax reduction. For 2026, each qualifying child under 17 is worth up to $2,200 toward your federal tax bill — verified directly from IRS Revenue Procedure 2025-32 this session — but that $2,200 only reduces your ACTUAL tax bill up to the amount of tax you owe. Any leftover credit above your tax liability can potentially come back as a refund through the Additional Child Tax Credit (ACTC), but only up to $1,700 per child, and only up to 15% of your earned income above $2,500. A family with very little tax liability and very little earned income can genuinely lose part of the credit to these limits entirely — not because they did anything wrong, but because the credit was designed with both a nonrefundable ceiling and a separate, narrower refundable ceiling layered on top of each other.

This calculator walks through both layers in the order the IRS actually applies them. First, it multiplies your number of qualifying children by $2,200 and applies the MAGI-based phase-out: for every $1,000 (or fraction of $1,000) your Modified AGI exceeds $200,000 (Single) or $400,000 (Married Filing Jointly), the credit drops by $50 — a reduction schedule set directly in the statute (26 U.S.C. §24(b)) and unchanged by the One, Big, Beautiful Bill Act. Second, whatever credit survives the phase-out is applied against your tax liability before other credits eat into that room; whatever amount can't be absorbed by your tax bill becomes 'unused' credit. Third, that unused credit is tested against the ACTC's own two limits — 15% of your earned income above $2,500, and a hard $1,700-per-child ceiling — and only the SMALLER of those two limits (and the unused amount itself) actually comes back to you as a refund.

The reason this three-step order matters is that it produces genuinely counterintuitive results at the edges. A family with three children, $210,000 in MAGI (just over the Single phase-out threshold), $40,000 in earned income, and only $1,000 in tax liability before credits ends up receiving the FULL $6,100 credit their income level allows — most of it as a refund, not a tax reduction — because their earned income comfortably clears the ACTC's 15%-above-$2,500 test. But a lower-income family with just one child and only $2,000 in earned income for the year loses their entire $2,200 credit, because earned income below the $2,500 floor produces a $0 ACTC limit under the statutory formula, and they had no tax liability to absorb the nonrefundable portion either. This calculator's `creditLostToLimits` output exists specifically to make that second, less-discussed outcome visible rather than leaving families to discover it only after filing.

This page models the Child Tax Credit and refundable Additional Child Tax Credit for qualifying children only — it does not compute the separate, smaller $500 nonrefundable Credit for Other Dependents that applies to adult dependents or children who don't meet the qualifying-child test. If your household includes dependents outside the under-17 qualifying-child category, their credit is not modeled here.

What is child tax credit calculator?

The Child Tax Credit (CTC) is a federal tax credit for each qualifying child under age 17 at the end of the tax year, worth up to $2,200 per child for 2026 under Internal Revenue Code §24, as most recently confirmed permanent by the One, Big, Beautiful Bill Act. The credit is primarily NONrefundable — it can reduce your tax bill to zero but not below zero on its own. The Additional Child Tax Credit (ACTC) is the refundable companion piece: up to $1,700 per child of any CTC amount that couldn't be used against your tax liability can come back as an actual refund, but only if you have enough earned income to clear a separate formula (15% of earned income above $2,500).

The credit phases out — is gradually reduced — once your Modified Adjusted Gross Income exceeds $200,000 (Single, Head of Household, or Married Filing Separately) or $400,000 (Married Filing Jointly), dropping by $50 for every $1,000 (or fraction of $1,000) of MAGI above that threshold. This phase-out applies to the combined credit for ALL your qualifying children together, not per child — a family with more children simply starts from a higher pre-phase-out total before the same per-$1,000 reduction is subtracted.

How to use this calculator.

1. 01Enter your number of qualifying children under age 17.
2. 02Enter your Modified AGI (MAGI) — usually the same as your AGI for CTC purposes.
3. 03Select your filing status: Single or Married Filing Jointly.
4. 04Enter your earned income (wages plus net self-employment earnings) — this determines your refundable ACTC limit.
5. 05Enter your tax liability before credits, and any other nonrefundable credits you're already claiming.
6. 06Read your total credit received, and check 'Credit Lost to Limits' to see if any part of your credit is neither usable against your tax bill nor refundable.

The formula.

Reviewed on 2026-07-27 against Revenue Procedure 2025-32 and 26 U.S.C. §24. The calculation runs in three stages. First, the tentative credit is the number of qualifying children times $2,200, reduced by the MAGI phase-out: for every $1,000 (or fraction thereof) your MAGI exceeds $200,000 (Single) or $400,000 (Married Filing Jointly), the combined credit drops by $50, per the statutory formula in §24(b). This produces the credit after phase-out.

Second, that credit is applied against your available tax liability (tax liability before credits, minus any other credits already claimed) — this nonrefundable portion cannot exceed either the credit itself or your remaining tax liability, whichever is smaller. Whatever credit survives after this offset becomes the 'unused' amount carried into the third stage.

Third, the unused amount can be refunded as the Additional Child Tax Credit, but only up to the SMALLEST of three figures: the unused amount itself, 15% of your earned income above a $2,500 floor (§24(d), with the $2,500 threshold set by §24(h)(6) for post-2017 years), and a hard cap of $1,700 per qualifying child (§24(h)(2), confirmed for 2026 by Revenue Procedure 2025-32). Any amount that clears none of these three ceilings is reported separately as `creditLostToLimits` — credit that the law simply does not pay out, most commonly because a family's earned income for the year was too low to clear the $2,500 floor.

A worked example.

Frequently asked questions.

References& sources.

1. [1]Internal Revenue Service (2025). Revenue Procedure 2025-32 §4.05 (Child Tax Credit 2026 figures), via IRS Internal Revenue Bulletin 2025-45.
2. [2]26 U.S.C. §24 — Child Tax Credit (phase-out formula, ACTC formula, and 2026 thresholds).
3. [3]Internal Revenue Service. Child Tax Credit.
4. [4]119th United States Congress (2025). H.R. 1, "One Big Beautiful Bill Act," Public Law 119-21 (signed July 4, 2025).