Don't do your taxes yet. Parents and businesses could benefit from last-minute changes in Congress.

• A bipartisan group of lawmakers is weighing restoring some tax breaks, the Washington Post reported.
• It would include restoring the child tax credit, which lapsed at the end of 2021.

Parents and businesses might be on track for some extra tax credits before it comes time to file taxes this season.

The Washington Post first reported on Thursday that a bipartisan group of lawmakers, including Senate Finance Committee Chair Ron Wyden and House Ways and Means Committee Chair Jason Smith, are negotiating a $100 billion bill to restore some of the 2017 tax cuts signed into law by former President Donald Trump, along with expanding the Child Tax Credit much like that of President Joe Biden's American Rescue Plan.

According to the Post, the lawmakers are hoping to get the bill passed by the end of the month so Americans can benefit from the credits before filing their taxes. However, it comes at a busy time for Congress as it's working through spending negotiations to prevent a partial government shutdown that would begin on January 19.

"Discussions are ongoing and have been productive, and the goal remains for changes to take effect in time for this upcoming filing season," Ryan Carey, a Wyden spokesperson, told Business Insider.

Biden's American Rescue Plan included an expansion to the child tax credit in 2021 that gave $3,000 per child to families with children over the age of six and $3,600 per child to families with children under six. A key feature of the ARP was that it paid out some of the credit in monthly checks. The US Census Bureau found that in just the first month the credit was active, it fed 2 million children and kept 3 million of them out of poverty.

However, Republican opposition to the ARP credit led it to expire in December 2021, and the CTC is currently a maximum of $2,000 per qualifying child. Biden's budget proposal from March 2023 requested the credit be restored, and some Democrats have been pushing Republicans to work with them to make it happen. Democratic Sen. Michael Bennet, one of the architects of the policy, said during a June hearing that "the reality is a world where parents are scraping by every single month – they can't afford the rent in this savage economy."

"They can't afford to pay for food, they can't afford to pay for childcare," he continued. "It's tragic. They can't afford to work in America because it's so expensive to pay for childcare, unlike in other countries in the world, because their health care isn't predicted."

The new bipartisan deal could also be a boon for businesses

Part of Trump's 2017 tax package included the end of a full research and development deduction for businesses, which the law set to expire in 2022. The new proposed package would reportedly seek to restore that — meaning that businesses might once again be able to deduct expenses in full.

It's not the first time Democrats have tried to exchange tax breaks for beefed-up family support. At the end of 2022, 58 members of Congress signed a letter saying that any corporate tax breaks needed to be accompanied by "commensurate support and relief" for American families and workers. Those lawmakers wanted to restart monthly child tax credit checks and extend the expansion of the Earned Income Tax Credit.

However, any bipartisan deal will likely be smaller, albeit not insignificant. And it also needs to come quickly, as another potential government shutdown looms and tax season approaches.

"The President strongly believes that any bill that is out there in Congress that certainly cuts taxes for big corporations must cut taxes for working people and families with children, especially to reduce child poverty," White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre said in a Thursday briefing.

"That's why the American Rescue Plan, the first piece of legislation the president signed that only had Democrats' votes on it, was so important because it had that child tax credit in it," Jean-Pierre continued. "And what we learned from that is it helped to cut child poverty by nearly half, and so obviously, this is something that the president supports. So we'll see what Congress brings forth."