Ivanka Trump’s involvement in tax negotiations between the White House and congressional Republicans is a signal of her influence with her father despite having no formal role in his administration. Dina Powell, the former Goldman Sachs Group Inc. executive who is an economic adviser to the president, is helping Trump to ensure a tax overhaul includes both the child care benefit and a requirement that employers provide paid maternity leave, policies that she pressed her father to embrace on the campaign trail last year.

“Ivanka is really pushing that none of it gets passed unless it includes the child care tax plan,” said Sheila Marcelo, founder of www.care.com, a website to find babysitters and other caregivers. “She and Dina Powell are really pushing to make sure it gets included.”…

It’s not clear whether Ivanka Trump is finding much appetite on Capitol Hill for her proposal. A deduction for child care expenses is both costly and regressive because it would favor wealthier families with two working parents. The deduction would cost the federal government $500 billion in revenue over a decade, according to an estimate by the Tax Foundation, a politically conservative, nonprofit research group.

“The child care proposal is generous and broad; almost everyone with young children will get some benefit from it. However, the largest benefits will go to relatively affluent dual-income families using paid child care,” said Alan Cole, an economist with the Tax Foundation.