"The purpose is to give tax relief -- targeted tax relief -- to low-income households who are working," he says. "And this tax will piggyback on to the comparable federal earned-income tax credit, which has actually grown to be one of the largest anti-poverty programs.

"And the way it works is it allows qualified households to get back some, all or maybe even more than the amount of income tax they've had withheld from their check," Dr. Walden adds. "The idea is that it's going to encourage low-income households to work, because it actually increases the benefit from working. And yet it does supplement their income. So there's a focus here on incentives.

"Now many in North Carolina have pushed this for a long time. And I think the reason perhaps it came about this year is the state sales tax was increased," he explains. "Low-income households typically pay a higher percentage of their income in sales tax, so in some sense to compensate for that supporters of the earned income tax credit say the time was now to institute that new program."