Employer Resources
Turn Child Care Into a Workforce Advantage
Child care access directly affects employee attendance, retention, recruitment, and productivity. ICCBA helps Indiana employers understand how child care support can strengthen their workforce while connecting businesses with licensed child care providers and practical policy resources.
Why It Matters
Child Care Is a Business Issue
When employees cannot find reliable child care, employers feel the impact through missed work, turnover, reduced productivity, and hiring challenges. For Indiana businesses, child care is no longer just a family concern. It is workforce infrastructure.
ICCBA helps employers, chambers of commerce, HR leaders, and business owners better understand how child care partnerships can support working parents, stabilize teams, and strengthen Indiana’s economy.
The Business Case
How Child Care Support Helps Employers
Employers who support child care are better positioned to recruit working parents, retain experienced employees, reduce absenteeism, and build stronger relationships with the communities they serve.
Recruit Better
Child care support can help employers stand out in a competitive labor market, especially among working parents and caregivers.
Retain Longer
When child care is stable, employees are more likely to remain in the workforce and less likely to leave due to family care challenges.
Reduce Absenteeism
Reliable child care helps reduce missed workdays caused by child care breakdowns, schedule gaps, or lack of available care.
Reduce Your Tax Bill
Federal child care tax credit opportunities may help eligible employers offset part of the cost of supporting child care access.
Federal Tax Credit Opportunity
Employer-Provided Child Care Tax Credit
Starting in tax year 2026, the federal Employer-Provided Child Care Credit was expanded to make child care support more accessible for businesses. Employers may be able to use qualified child care expenses to help offset the cost of supporting employees with child care access.
This may create new opportunities for employers to contract with licensed child care providers, participate in shared child care solutions, or support child care access as part of a broader workforce strategy.
Alliance Resources
Employer Resources From ICCBA
ICCBA is building Indiana-specific employer resources to help businesses understand child care as a workforce, tax, and economic development issue.
Employer Success Stories
Real examples of Indiana businesses using child care benefits to improve recruitment, retention, attendance, and employee stability.
Employer Child Care Benefits Guide
An ICCBA-authored, Indiana-specific guide to help employers understand child care benefit options, provider partnerships, and workforce support strategies.
Early Employer Success Story Feature
Businesses interested in being featured as an early employer success story can contact ICCBA directly.
Licensed Provider Partnership Connections
Employers interested in supporting child care access can contact ICCBA to be connected with an Alliance member center or licensed Indiana child care provider.
Supporting Research
Helpful Employer Child Care References
The following external resources can help employers better understand federal child care tax credits, child care benefit strategies, and the business case for supporting working parents.
IRS: Employer-Provided Child Care Credit
Official IRS guidance, eligibility rules, and federal information for the Employer-Provided Child Care Credit for tax year 2026 and later.
View IRS Guidance →IRS Form 8882
Employers use Form 8882 to claim the Credit for Employer-Provided Childcare Facilities and Services.
View Form 8882 →Bipartisan Policy Center: 45F Tax Credit Guide
A plain-language 2026 guide explaining what changed, why it matters, and how the 45F employer-provided child care credit may apply to businesses.
Read the 45F Guide →Civitas Strategies: Employer-Provided Child Care Tax Credit Guide
A practical employer-facing guide that explains qualified child care expenses, Form 8882, planning steps, and includes a calculator-style tool.
Read the Civitas Guide →Congress.gov: The 45F Tax Credit
A nonpartisan Congressional Research Service summary of the 45F employer-provided child care tax credit, including its history and recent changes.
View CRS Summary →Bright Horizons: Employer-Provided Child Care Credit Expansion
An employer-facing overview from a national child care benefits provider explaining child care support strategies and tax credit opportunities.
Read Employer Overview →Take Action
What Indiana Employers Can Do Next
Employers do not have to solve child care alone. ICCBA can help businesses understand the issue, explore provider partnerships, and learn how child care support may strengthen workforce stability.
- Download and review IRS Form 8882 for the Credit for Employer-Provided Childcare Facilities and Services.
- Talk to your CPA or tax advisor about whether your business may qualify as an eligible small business under IRC §448(c).
- Consider contracting directly with an Alliance member center or co-funding a facility with other local employers.
- Contact ICCBA to be connected with a licensed Indiana child care provider for a potential employer partnership.
- Review whether a Dependent Care Assistance Program may complement the 45F credit for your business.
Employer FAQ
Common Questions From Employers
Learn how child care access affects workforce stability and how Indiana employers can begin exploring child care support strategies.
Why should employers care about child care?
Child care affects whether parents can work consistently. When employees lose access to reliable care, businesses may experience absenteeism, turnover, staffing shortages, and productivity challenges.
What is the Employer-Provided Child Care Credit?
The Employer-Provided Child Care Credit is a federal tax credit designed to help eligible businesses offset qualified child care facility and resource referral expenses. Employers should consult their CPA or tax advisor to determine eligibility.
Can a business support child care without building its own facility?
Yes. Depending on the structure, employers may explore partnerships with licensed child care providers, third-party providers, intermediaries, or other local employers. Professional tax and legal guidance should be used before setting up any program.
Can ICCBA connect employers with licensed child care providers?
Yes. Employers interested in exploring child care partnerships can contact ICCBA to be connected with Alliance member centers and licensed Indiana child care operators.
Is this only for large employers?
No. Child care access affects employers of all sizes. Small and mid-sized businesses may also benefit from exploring child care partnerships, tax credit opportunities, and workforce support strategies.
Should employers talk to a CPA before using the tax credit?
Yes. ICCBA provides general information and connections, but employers should always speak with a qualified CPA or tax advisor before claiming any credit or structuring a child care benefit.
Why ICCBA?
Frequently Asked Questions
Clear answers for licensed child care operators, employers, policymakers, and supporters who want to strengthen Indiana’s child care future.
What is the Indiana Child Care Business Alliance?
The Indiana Child Care Business Alliance, or ICCBA, is a business-led organization created to protect, strengthen, and advance licensed child care businesses across Indiana. ICCBA gives licensed operators a unified voice in Indiana’s economic, legislative, and early education future.
Who should join ICCBA?
ICCBA is built for licensed child care operators who want a stronger voice in policy, funding, regulation, insurance, and workforce conversations. Employers, chambers of commerce, business leaders, and community partners can also support ICCBA as corporate or advocacy partners.
Why does Indiana need ICCBA?
Indiana’s licensed child care operators face major business and policy challenges, including voucher uncertainty, rising insurance pressure, inconsistent regulatory enforcement, licensing burdens, workforce issues, and public-sector competition. ICCBA exists to organize the business side of child care so operators are not politically invisible.
What issues does ICCBA focus on?
ICCBA focuses on voucher stability, insurance reform, licensing modernization, regulatory consistency, private-sector child care protection, workforce development, and recognition of child care as essential economic infrastructure. These were identified as core issue areas for the website’s policy hub.
Why does ICCBA call child care workforce infrastructure?
Reliable child care allows parents to work, employers to retain talent, communities to grow, and children to enter school ready to succeed. When child care breaks down, workforce reliability breaks down. ICCBA helps position child care as an economic infrastructure issue for Indiana.
Is ICCBA only for one child care brand or school?
No. ICCBA is designed to be an independent, statewide alliance for licensed child care businesses across Indiana. It should not represent one school, one provider, or one brand. The goal is to create a unified business voice for licensed operators statewide.
What does membership help fund?
Membership helps fund advocacy, policy education, legislative support, communications, outreach, member recruitment, public awareness, and the organized work needed to make licensed child care businesses a stronger political and economic force in Indiana.
How can employers support ICCBA?
Membership helps fund advocacy, policy education, legislative support, communications, outreach, member recruitment, public awareness, and the organized work needed to make licensed child care businesses a stronger political and economic force in Indiana.
Can parents and community members get involved?
Yes. Parents and community supporters can join the advocacy list, share their child care stories, support ICCBA’s mission publicly, and help policymakers understand how child care access affects work, family stability, and local communities.
How do I become a founding member?
Licensed child care operators can become founding members by completing the membership form on the ICCBA website. A member of the ICCBA team will follow up with next steps, membership details, and ways to participate in the founding campaign.
Get Involved
Help Build the Business Voice Indiana Child Care Has Been Missing
Join ICCBA as a founding member and help protect licensed child care businesses, strengthen private-sector early education, and advance child care as workforce infrastructure across Indiana.
COMPANY
LEGAL
ICCBA is operator-led, parent-grounded, and built for Indiana’s child care future.
Indiana Child Care Business Alliance Inc. is an Indiana nonprofit corporation organized to advocate for licensed child care operators and strengthen the workforce infrastructure families, employers, and communities depend on.
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