Expansion of adoption tax credit sent to governor

      Missouri legislators hope one of the bills they’ve sent to the governor will lead to more children being adopted into loving homes. 

      One of the provisions in Senate Bill 24 would expand Missouri’s adoption tax credit, which offers a nonrefundable tax credit for one-time adoption-related expenses such as attorney fees, up to $10,000 per child.  That credit is capped at $6-million a year.  SB 24 would remove that cap, makes the tax credit refundable, and would have the per-child limit adjust with inflation.

      Those proposed changes are now awaiting action by Governor Mike Parson (R), and their House sponsor, Hannah Kelly (R-Mountain Grove), couldn’t be happier. 

      “I just think we did something really good today.  I honestly had given up on it and then it passed.  I couldn’t hardly believe it.  Now it’s on the governor’s desk.  I’m very thankful,” said Kelly.  “We’re just saying, ‘Hey, we’re here to make sure that we invest in these kids and these families, help them get across the line, get them out of the system, get them building their futures together as a family.’”

      More than 2,200 Missouri children are awaiting adoption.  Representative Keri Ingle (D-Lee’s Summit) once worked as an adoption specialist with the state Children’s Division, and said most of the families who would adopt those children see the system as complicated and laced with prohibitive expenses.

      “They know it costs a lot of money, they know it’s hard, they know that they have to jump through a lot of bureaucratic hurdles, but they don’t know that there’s support on the other end of it.  They don’t know that they’ll be eligible, perhaps, for a subsidy and tax credits and things like that, that will help them complete their family and get kids out of foster care and make it affordable and not cost prohibitive.”

      Ingle said this bill could make a huge difference.

“We have kids that linger in care indefinitely and unnecessarily, because there are so many families out there that want to adopt kids, that want to create forever homes for these kids, but they just feel like it’s beyond their fiscal ability to do so.  Anything we can do to help them through that process and create that forever family and get these kids out of [state] care … there are way too many people that would love to expand their families and adopt.”

      The bill is especially personal for Kelly, who talks often to her colleagues and in public settings about her own experience adopting her then-teenage daughter. 

      “My daughter is building her own life and celebrating her impending wedding coming soon and going to college and doing all the things that you hope to see your children do, not because of me but because she simply had the opportunity to know she had a forever home base to come back to.  To be a part of that is a privilege and to get to be a part of helping Missouri families provide that for children who otherwise would not have that, is a privilege.”

      Ingle said even as other issues have caused tension between her party and Republicans there has been a lot of cooperation on issues like this one, and she’s been glad to be a part of it.

      “We’ve been really, really lucky to have a specific group of people in my tenure that have really placed children and child welfare at the forefront of what we work on and placed partisan ship at the very, very back when it comes to those things.  Politics has nothing to do with child welfare and it shouldn’t have anything to do with that.  We should all come together and do what’s right for the kids of this state, and so I’m always really proud to see the work that my colleagues do, on both sides of the aisle, when it pertains to that.”

      Kelly added, “If any Missouri family wants to give a child who does not have a forever home a home we need to back up and support them, and that is what this credit is about.”

      The House’s final vote on SB 24 was 139-5.  It now awaits the governor’s decision to either sign it into law, veto it, or allow it to become law without his action.