AUSTIN, Texas — It’s the end of a long workday for Jessica Vasquez. She works at a car wash during the day to provide for her two kids. Vasquez says her total bills a month can total in the thousands.

“It’s about $3,000,” she said. 

Even though she’s a struggling single parent, she still chose to opt out of receiving the monthly child tax credit payments. 

During 2021, parents received a boost to their bank accounts in the form of monthly payments of up to $300 for each child under 6 and $250 for kids 6 to 17. 

“I opted out of it. The only reason that I didn’t [opt in], it came out too fast. I didn’t know what the outcome was going to be. I didn’t know if they were going to give too much money, if they were going to do the numbers right and how it was going to affect my income tax at the end of the year,” Vasquez said. 

Vasquez instead chose to save her tax credit in hopes of a bigger tax return. 

The child tax credit payments were extended back in March of last year as part of the federal COVID relief plan, but those payments ended in December. 

Lawmakers failed to extend the payments into 2022 when it did not get the full support of the Democrats, most notably Sen. Joe Manchin, D-WV.

The monthly payments for some families were used to cover costs of needs such as food, rent and child care.  

“This is an opportunity to help families through monthly payments,” said Matt Worthington, vice chair of the City of Austin’s Early Childhood Council. “It's [day care] not only good for them socially, emotionally, and academically to get that early start, but it’s also something that helps families. It helps their economic well-being and their prosperity and that contributes to long-term well-being and prosperity of the kid.”

Economists note the payments had an impact to low-income families. 

“This was a welcomed credit for families that needed it the most. Like I said before to buy those that are most necessary, whether that’s food on the table, rent, a mortgage payment or just keeping the power on,” said Matt Patton, executive vice president of Angelou Economics.

Patton said the payments gave families an extra source of income which also impacted the economy. 

“It’s an overall benefit,” he said. "When we’re able to increase economic mobility and reduce poverty, especially reduce child poverty — those are net benefits.”

Vasquez said for many of her friends and neighbors the payments meant food on the table, gas in the car and a roof over their heads. 

“So that extra money helps everybody in every way. You can’t look at somebody and say they’re going to use it for this. You don’t know somebody’s life situation to know what they’re going to use it on,” she said.