H.R. 10494, the American Tariff Rebate Act, was introduced in the House on September 17, 2026, and the official record shows nothing since. It proposes a $2,000 credit per filer, and it is parked in three House committees with no cosponsors attached. Nothing in it has been enacted, no agency has a payment page for it, and no money is moving.
What the House record shows for H.R. 10494
The bill’s sponsor is Rep. Valerie P. Foushee, a North Carolina Democrat who represents the state’s 4th District. The official bill-status record published through GovInfo lists September 17, 2026 as the introduction date and carries the referral line “Referred to Ways and Means, and in addition Judiciary and Homeland Security.” That same record lists the latest action as that referral, dated September 17, and lists no cosponsors. The file itself was last refreshed on October 2, 2026, and the latest-action date was still September 17 when it was read on October 4.
That makes the bill alive but dormant. It has not been voted down, tabled or withdrawn, and the 119th Congress is still in session, so the proposal technically remains available for committee action. It has also not been scheduled for anything the record shows: no hearing, no markup, no committee report.
Ways and Means, Judiciary and Homeland Security share the referral
Three committees hold the bill: Ways and Means, Judiciary, and Homeland Security. The referral language says each has the bill “for a period to be subsequently determined by the Speaker, in each case for consideration of such provisions as fall within the jurisdiction of the committee concerned.” In practice that means no committee has a clock running that anyone outside the House leadership can see.
Ways and Means is the natural home for the core of the bill, because its own jurisdiction statement covers “taxes and other revenue-raising measures, as well as tariffs, reciprocal trade agreements, and the bonded debt of the United States.” The bill rewrites the Internal Revenue Code to add a new credit, so the tax-writing panel would be the first stop for any markup. The record read for this piece does not say which provisions the other two committees would claim, and nothing sourced says when any of the three might take the bill up.
The credit the bill would add to the tax code
The introduced text of the bill would add a new section 6428C to the code. Its base credit is “$2,000 ($4,000 in the case of a joint return)” plus “$600 multiplied by the number of dependents.” The credit would shrink as adjusted gross income rises. A single filer’s credit would begin to phase out at $75,000 over a $5,000 range, a head-of-household filer’s at $112,500 over a $7,500 range, and a joint return’s at $150,000 over a $10,000 range.
The text also lists who is left out. Nonresident aliens, people who are dependents of another taxpayer, and estates and trusts would not qualify. A valid identification number, meaning a Social Security number or an adoption taxpayer identification number, would have to appear on the return.
All of this is conditional language in a bill that has not been voted on. A credit written into an introduced bill creates no entitlement, and the text can be amended, merged into another measure or left untouched until the Congress ends.
A 2026 payment window that keeps shrinking
The same bill text points to the calendar as a problem for its own design. It calls for advance payments in 2026 based on 2024 and 2025 tax information, and it says “No refund or credit shall be made or allowed under this subsection after December 31, 2026.” As of October 4, that leaves 88 days in which a committee would have to act, both chambers would have to pass the bill, and a president would have to sign it before the payment window the text describes could even open.
The bill also carries its own funding. It appropriates $1.464 billion for IRS administration, $7 million for the Bureau of the Fiscal Service and $8 million for the Treasury Inspector General’s oversight work. Those figures are what the bill proposes to spend on running the program, not an amount that Congress has approved.
Where the tariff label comes from
The bill’s name points at tariffs, but the text does not. It contains no mechanism that sends tariff revenue to households; the credit is a straight tax credit with a separate appropriation behind it. The connection is in the case Foushee makes for it. In a September 18 press release, she said, “Working families across North Carolina and the country continue to face rising living costs.” The release says the bill offsets “costs from tariffs and rising expenses,” and it cites the congressional Joint Economic Committee’s estimate that American families paid more than $231 billion in tariff costs between February 2025 and January 2026, roughly $1,745 per family, with projections above $2,500 per family in 2026.
The release repeats the amounts in the bill text: $2,000 for individual filers, $4,000 for married couples filing jointly and $600 per qualifying dependent, with phase-outs starting at $75,000 for single filers, $112,500 for heads of household and $150,000 for joint filers. It does not name a funding source for the credit, and it does not name any cosponsor.
What the official feed would show if the bill moves
Any real movement would register in the same bill-status record as a new latest-action date after September 17: a hearing, a markup, a committee report or a floor vote. As of its October 2 refresh, the record carried a single action, the September 17 referral to Ways and Means, Judiciary and Homeland Security, and an empty cosponsor list.
Income limits that decide programs already on the books
H.R. 10494 would hang its credit on adjusted gross income, the same kind of income line that decides eligibility for benefit programs that exist today. The bill gives a household nothing to apply for, so the practical job it leaves open is sorting out which programs already running have income limits worth knowing before the next application window.
The Benefits Checklist is a 69-page guide covering 11 benefit programs, with the 2026 income limits and a 50-state phone directory, and a printable tracker comes with the download.
Line up the 2026 income limits for the 11 programs that already run →
This piece was drafted with AI assistance; the bill details were checked against the GovInfo bill-status record and introduced text of H.R. 10494, the Ways and Means jurisdiction page and Rep. Foushee’s September 18 release.
