WASHINGTON — The IRS began issuing Developmental Contact Credits quietly in February, after a compliance algorithm flagged a statistically anomalous number of households in which children aged 8 to 17 were logging between four and eleven hours of daily ChatGPT interaction while parental contact averaged 43 minutes, including mealtimes.
So far, approximately 4.3 million households have qualified.
The Family Communications Infrastructure Preservation Act of 1991 passed overwhelmingly by a Congress primarily concerned with the welfare of children aboard long-haul fishing vessels and polar research stations. It defines “Primary Formative Influence” as any entity — corporate, governmental, or individual — that logs more cumulative daily contact hours with a minor than that minor’s legal guardian. At the time of passage, sponsors estimated the law would affect roughly 400 families per year. A provision capping eligibility at “non-automated correspondents” was removed in committee after lobbying from the Association of Educational Correspondence Schools. “The law is very clear,” said Renata Sousa, a tax attorney specializing in legacy communications statutes who has now pivoted her entire practice to FCIPA compliance. “If the threshold is met, the platform becomes the Primary Formative Influence of record. OpenAI didn’t ask for this. The parents didn’t ask for this. Congress in 1991 definitely didn’t ask for this. And yet here we are.”
To claim the $340 credit, parents must complete Form 7-CI, certifying that they were “engaged in substantive economic, caregiving, or civic activity” during the logged hours and that any documented changes in their child’s “belief taxonomy, ideological orientation, or expressed relational preferences” are “consistent with platform output and not indicative of third-party interference.” The form takes approximately four minutes to complete and is available as a PDF.