“Cutting taxes on working families was one of our main goals when Congress debated how to respond to the economic downturn last year,” Mollohan said, “This new report demonstrates just how successful we were.”

The report, which was prepared by Citizens for Tax Justice, shows that the vast majority of West Virginians benefited from at least one of the major tax cuts passed by Congress: expansions of the Earned Income Tax Credit and the Child Tax Credit, the Making Working Pay Tax Credit, and relief from the Alternative Minimum Tax.

The average tax cut for working families and individuals in West Virginia was $1,092. The report defined working people as any taxpayers who had earned income. This definition does not include Social Security recipients, who received a one-time payment of $250.

According to Citizens for Tax Justice, the expansions of the Child Tax Credit and Earned Income Tax Credit cut taxes on the poorest three-fifths of working people in West Virginia by an average $185, while the Making Work Pay Credit cut taxes by an average of $550 on all working West Virginians.

“These tax cuts did two things,” Mollohan said. “They made it a little bit easier for working families to weather the economic downturn, and they also provided one more stimulus to keep our economy from sliding into another Great Depression.”

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