2019 Pennsylvania EITC Changes

2019 Credit Increase Bill

Senate Bill 299 creates an Automatic Escalator for EITC/OSTC tax credits Under the recently introduced proposal, the amount available in each tax credit program would increase 25 percent annually if donors claimed at least 90 percent of the available credits in the prior year. Supporters call this an “escalator” clause, meaning the amount would go up automatically.

This bill if passed should allow more new EITC donors as most credits are currently exhausted by existing donors who apply between May 15 and June 30.  New donors on July 1 rarely get EITC/OSTC credit awards because of the donor demand.

2019-2020 Delay in Qualified Organization
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 Legislative changes to the application timeline for EITC/OSTC non-profit organizations will be implemented as part of the upcoming 2019 – 2020 fiscal year. The historical renewal date of May 1st has been pushed back to November 1st. This will be a permanent change to November 1st. The current list of approved organizations will remain in effect until December 31, 2019 with a new list to be published in January 2020. Thus if your organization is currently part of the approved list you will not need to do anything until November 2019. The change in the non-profit application timeline was done to get participating organizations and participating businesses off of the same timeline of renewal. The volume of applications arriving in May of every year became a challenge to navigate thus necessitating the change.
 
    •    There is no change to the business application timeline. The business application timeline will once again be May 15th – June 30th for renewal applicants and Monday July 1, 2019 for initial applicants.
 
The release of the upcoming 2019 -2020 EITC/OSTC organization guidelines will include the new date for renewal applications.

This change will allow DCED a better time to register new and renewing school, EIO organizations and scholarship organizations on the published list of qualified organizations to receive EITC donation in 2020.  This is a smart common sense change to lower problems and allow plenty of time at DCED and charity organizations to renew with proper documentation and reconciliation of prior year EITC/OSTC donation records so the annual online list can be accurate quickly.