The New Jobs tax credit was a

tax credit A tax credit is a tax incentive which allows certain taxpayers to subtract the amount of the credit they have accrued from the total they owe the state. It may also be a credit granted in recognition of taxes already paid or a form of state "disc ...

policy created as part of the 1977 stimulus package enacted by the

Carter administration Jimmy Carter's tenure as the 39th president of the United States began with his inauguration on January 20, 1977, and ended on January 20, 1981. A Democrat from Georgia, Carter took office after defeating incumbent Republican President ...

and was in effect through 1978. The tax credit acted as a form of

wage subsidy A wage subsidy is a payment to workers by the state, made either directly or through their employers. Its purposes are to redistribute income and to obviate the welfare trap attributed to other forms of relief, thereby reducing unemployment. It is ...

by granting employers a tax credit for making new hires. In 1979, the credit was not renewed and it was ultimately perceived as a failure due to poor execution and lack of exposure. As written in the

Tax Reduction and Simplification Act of 1977 The Tax Reduction and Simplification Act of 1977 was passed by the 95th United States Congress and signed into law by President Jimmy Carter on May 23, 1977. It replaced the percentage standard deduction and minimum standard deduction with a singl ...

, the tax credit offered fifty percent of the first $4,200 in wages per employee for increases in employment of at least two percent over the previous year. In early 2010, there was renewed interest in duplicating the original 1977 tax credit in legislation proposed by

Barack Obama Barack Hussein Obama II ( ; born August 4, 1961) is an American politician who served as the 44th president of the United States from 2009 to 2017. A member of the Democratic Party, Obama was the first African-American president of the U ...

. The proposed tax credit was renamed and included in the

Hiring Incentives to Restore Employment Act The Hiring Incentives to Restore Employment (HIRE) Act of 2010 (, ) is a law in the 111th United States Congress to provide payroll tax breaks and incentives for businesses to hire unemployed workers. Often characterized as a "jobs bill", certain ...

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