Everything you need to know about federal concern for the working poor in about 90 seconds

The Earned Income Tax Credit is an IRS program intended to provide tax relief to low-income families with children. It now benefits about 21 million Americans.

As noted by the Christian Science Monitor this past Wednesday, standards for the program are confusing and difficult; even IRS Commissioner Mark Everson recently admitted "it is tough for a lot of people to figure out if they qualify or not."

As a result, when the IRS examined returns for 1999 they found an error rate of 30% in returns using the EITC. More shocking is the fact that

some 25 percent of the people who are eligible for the program don't apply - perhaps because they don't know they are eligible.

The answer to this has been to run what David Williams, the EITC director at the IRS, calls "a very robust" audit of people who use the program. In addition, the agency is conducting a pilot program requiring EITC participants to "prequalify" their dependents with records proving the child actually lives with them.

As for Congress, last week the Senate Budget Committee voted to cut the program by 10%, a vote, happily, reversed by the full Senate. The House has yet to act but it

"has said it would like $8 billion out of program cuts or tax increases," says John Wancheck, outreach coordinator for the earned-income credit at the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities in Washington. "When you look at places for cuts, Medicaid and EITC are at the top of the list."

So let's see. A program to help working poor taxpayers has problems. So we audit their returns, make it harder to participate, and look to cut the program, while doing absolutely nothing about the millions of people who are not obtaining the benefits to which they are entitled.

Yep, everything is in order.