CAPS Income Limit: Family Size, Countable Income, and Redetermination

Georgia’s CAPS income limit works on two tiers: to qualify as a new applicant, your family’s gross annual income must be at or below 50 percent of the State Median Income (SMI); once you’re enrolled, the ceiling rises to 85 percent of SMI at your annual redetermination. For a family of four applying for the first time, that initial cap is $55,368 per year as of March 2026. A family already in the program can earn up to $94,126 and keep benefits.¹

Initial Income Limits by Family Size

These are the maximums for a first-time CAPS application, effective March 2, 2026. The federal government updates SMI figures before each federal fiscal year on October 1, and CAPS adjusts its table to match.¹

Family of 1: $28,792
Family of 2: $37,651
Family of 3: $46,510
Family of 4: $55,368
Family of 5: $64,227
Family of 6: $73,086

Each additional member between sizes one and six adds roughly $8,859. At family sizes of seven or more, the curve flattens: each extra person adds about $1,661. A family of eight caps at $76,408. Divide any figure by 12 for a rough monthly equivalent. The $55,368 limit for a family of four, for example, works out to about $4,614 per month.

Income Limits at Redetermination

Once you’re enrolled, CAPS doesn’t drop you the first time your pay goes up. At your annual redetermination, the gross income ceiling climbs to 85 percent of SMI. A family of two can earn up to $64,006 and still qualify to continue; a family of four can earn up to $94,126, or roughly $7,844 a month.¹

The two tiers create a specific trap. If your household income sits between 50 and 85 percent of SMI, you can keep benefits as a current participant but could not qualify as a new applicant. If your case lapses and you have to reapply, the stricter 50-percent limit applies again. Staying current with your redetermination paperwork matters more than families often realize.

Federal rules also protect your eligibility between redeterminations. For the 12 months after approval or your last redetermination, your family stays eligible at the same benefit level even if income fluctuates, so long as it doesn’t cross 85 percent of SMI for your family size.²

Who Counts in Your Family Size

Which row of the income table applies to you depends on how CAPS defines your family unit. The unit is a parent with legal, biological, or day-to-day responsibility for children in the home, plus everyone that parent is responsible for.³

Counted in the household:

Biological, adopted, and stepchildren age 17 or younger, plus any children under your legal or physical guardianship.
A spouse living in the home. Unmarried partners who share a biological or legal child count in the same unit.
A spouse or parent temporarily away for work, military deployment, training, or education.

Some shared households split into separate units. An unmarried couple living together, each with children from prior relationships and no children in common, counts as two units. In multigenerational homes, grandparents and the biological parent are separate units as long as the parent keeps legal custody. If the grandparents hold legal custody, the biological parent in the home is not counted in the grandparents’ unit.³

What Income CAPS Counts

CAPS looks at the gross income of every adult in your family unit before taxes or deductions. The list of counted sources runs wider than a paycheck:³

Wages and salary from everyone 18 or older in the unit, including commissions, tips, cash bonuses, and military base pay.
Self-employment net income after allowable business expenses, not gross revenue.
Government benefits, including unemployment, worker’s compensation, veteran’s benefits, and Social Security.
Other recurring money: alimony, regular child support, rental income, dividends, retirement and pension payments, capital gains, and regular lottery payments.

Self-employment is the piece that trips families up. CAPS uses net income, but it disallows some deductions you might take on your taxes, including prior-year net losses, mileage not tied to the business, and payments toward principal on equipment or property. Personal expenses paid from a business account, health insurance premiums, and retirement plan contributions also don’t reduce countable income. If your Schedule C bottom line differs from the CAPS calculation, the CAPS figure controls for eligibility.³

How CAPS Turns Your Paycheck Into a Monthly Figure

The published limits are annual, but CAPS does its comparison on a monthly basis. The conversion multipliers from the Policy Manual are:³

Weekly pay: multiply by 4.3333
Bi-weekly pay (every other week): multiply by 2.1666
Semi-monthly pay (twice a month): multiply by 2

If your earnings swing significantly from one pay period to the next, CAPS staff will instead average your pay over the past six months. They total your earnings for that period, divide by the number of pay periods, and then apply the multiplier to produce a monthly figure.

Income Isn’t the Only Test

Meeting the income limit gets you into the conversation; it doesn’t finish it. Three other requirements decide whether a qualifying-income family actually receives benefits.

At least one parent must be working, in school, or in job training for an average of 24 hours per week, and activities can be combined to hit that number. Parents age 20 or younger enrolled in middle school, high school, adult education, a technical certificate program, an associate’s or bachelor’s program, or WorkSource Georgia training are exempt from the 24-hour minimum. Each credit hour in an education program counts as two activity hours. If a job or training program ends, you have a 13-week grace period before benefits are affected.³

Your child must also be 12 or younger. Children with a qualifying disability, or those with a court-ordered case plan requiring child care, can receive benefits through age 17.⁴

Finally, new applicants must fall into at least one recognized priority group, such as families experiencing domestic violence, grandparents raising grandchildren, student parents, minor parents, families of children with disabilities, families transitioning from TANF, or families lacking fixed and adequate housing. DECAL can narrow or adjust the priority groups based on available funding, and families outside any priority group can be denied even when income and activity requirements are met. The priority-group test applies only at initial enrollment, not at redetermination.³

1
Georgia Department of Early Care and Learning. CAPS Maximum Income Limits by Family Size
2
eCFR. 45 CFR Part 98 – Child Care and Development Fund
3
Georgia Department of Early Care and Learning. CAPS Policy Manual
4
Georgia.gov. Apply for Childcare and Parent Services (CAPS) Program