This is a credit, not a deduction. If you are running a tab with the I.R.S. common for freelancers like me) this sum is applied toward that balance. So this credit is of most use only to certain taxpayers, but is so generous as to feel like a windfall. Beyond standard-issue parental expenses — a stroller, a crib — there are adoption-specific expenses: travel, legal and agency fees. Every bit helps. In 2014, 73,951 American households claimed some percentage of the adoption tax credit. This cost the federal government $355 million.

My husband and I adopted our children through a private agency, Spence-Chapin Services to Families and Children. As a nonprofit organization, it relies on client fees as well as donor support to do its work.

The fees are significant, but are appropriate. Spence-Chapin’s clients are some of America’s most vulnerable citizens: babies. If a new mother is considering an adoption plan for her child, the agency can assume temporary guardianship of that newborn, ensuring that it is clothed and cared for and given medical attention, while its mother is provided with medical and counseling services as well as logistical support. Whether that mother determines that it’s best to be a parent herself or to place her child with a family that wants one, the agency will have fulfilled its mission: to care for the child. The time and expertise of the social workers, doctors, lawyers and others involved in this work should not come cheap.

We were able to pay some fees associated with adoption in cash. With our older son, now 8, we became parents much more quickly than we’d anticipated, and shuffled the balance of the expenses onto a credit card. That piece of debt quickly became abstract, as debt tends to; it was simply part of the larger financial picture that became more complicated once we had a small baby: health insurance, child care, clothes, diapers, those ridiculous swim and music classes that parents like us always seem to fall for. It was helpful to remember that this credit was in the offing; claiming it, and watching my tax bill effectively eliminated, felt like magic.