Every year, in December and in May, Susan Morice prepares a special project for her preschool class. “I do it as a thank you to my parents,” she says. This past year for Mother’s Day, Morice purchased flower pots and flowers to plant. For Christmas, she purchased rainbow candy canes and supplies to make Christmas ornaments. Since these projects are outside the preschool curriculum at the Meadows Elementary School near Omaha, Nebraska, where she works, she pays for these items out of pocket. However, tax breaks for early childhood educators are currently nonexistent, only offered to K-12 teachers who spend their own money on classroom supplies.

Morice has been a teacher for over 30 years, 16 of which she has been teaching pre-K; she estimates that she spends around $450 a year of her own money on non-reimbursed supplies like crafts, games, puzzles, books and toys for her classroom, demonstrating how helpful tax breaks for early childhood educators would be. She doesn’t have access to a color printer at school, so she uses one at home to print out pages for her class.

It’s not uncommon for educators to spend their own money on classroom supplies, which is why the U.S. tax code includes an educator expense deduction, allowing teachers in K-12 classrooms to deduct up to $300 a year on expenses that were not reimbursed. But Morice, like so many other early childhood educators, doesn’t qualify to take the deduction. Though she works alongside other teachers in her school, doing virtually identical teaching work, she and other pre-K teachers aren’t able to deduct their expenses.

Nationwide, early childhood educators earn, on average, less than half what their elementary school counterparts make, with a median hourly wage of $13.07. Thirteen percent earn below the poverty line, and almost half (43%) rely on public assistance. While policy debates about raising the wages of child care workers often center on bringing in more state or federal assistance, another option exists to shore up the industry using the tax code.

The education expense deduction is a federal income tax deduction of up to $300 annually for unreimbursed expenses (or $600 if two married educators are filing jointly). The teacher who buys poster board and markers for her classroom, or who enrolls in a continuing education class, can deduct those expenses. In response to the COVID-19 pandemic, qualified expenses also included PPE and disinfectant.

Read the full article about tax breaks for early childhood educators by Rebecca Gale at The 74.