Working childless adults^[ are the lone group that the federal tax code taxes into or deeper into poverty, largely because they are also the only group largely excluded from the Earned Income Tax Credit (EITC).  For low-income working families with children, the EITC encourages and rewards work and offsets federal payroll and income taxes.  The EITC for childless adults, by contrast, is so small that it effectively does none of those things. Today, the federal tax code taxes about 7.5 million childless adults aged 21 through 66 into or deeper into poverty.