The EITC was established amid the political debate over the NIT that occurred in the 1960s and 1970s. The NIT held great promise to the early designers of the war on poverty since it would solve the difficult integration issues that arise with categorical antipoverty programs—the need for bu- reaucracies to administer and enforce eligibility and benefit rules and the need to mitigate potentially high marginal tax rates that recipients face as earnings increase. Partly for these reasons, in 1966 an NIT was the cap- stone of the Office of Economic Opportunity’s (the federal agency in charge of conducting the war on poverty) plan to eradicate poverty
