Webinar-Earned Income Tax Credits (EITC) and Health
good afternoon everyone and thank you all for joining us this afternoon my name is Wendy heaps and I'll be the moderator for this afternoon's earned income tax credits and health webinar hosted by cdc's Office of the associate director for policy and strategy we'll hear from Elizabeth Skillen senior policy advisor from oadps as well as three presenters from external partner organizations today's webinar will be recorded and uploaded to the CDC website we will send out an email with an update to access the recording when it has been posted if you have any general questions or specific questions for any of our presenters please use the Q a functionality located in the bottom taskbar and zoom we will have some time at the end of the presentations for questions and answers we'll try to get to as many as we have time for any questions that we are unable to respond to on the webinar will be addressed in a subsequent wrap-up email now without further delay we will turn it over to our first presenter Elizabeth Skillen thanks so much Wendy and good afternoon everyone I'm Elizabeth Skillen a senior policy advisor from the office of the associate director for policy strategy here at the Centers for Disease Control and prevention I'm also the lead for a community health initiative called the health impact in five years or I5 initiative High five's part of our office's work to identify evidence-based policy interventions that can improve health and Advance Health Equity next slide please today I am super excited to host and co-host with my colleague Wendy a panel of experts that participated in cdc's first high five Earned Income Tax Credit policy implementation lab the panelists provided expertise and resources on increasing uptake of earned income tax credits through Innovative Partnerships and today we're going to learn about opportunities from these National Partners working to increase uptake at the itcs and case examples for public health to engage with Partners working on economic security and perspectives from one of our eitc policy participants in Massachusetts so we will hear from Annelise Grimm from the associate program director at code for America code for America is an organization that works shoulder to shoulder with Community organizations and government to build digital tools and services and Provo and improve programs through Partnerships empowerment and transformation in this role annalize led the organization's Workforce diversity project excuse me Workforce Discovery project which resulted in the creation of get your refund.org she will share Lessons Learned From get your refund to help ensure all families can access the tax benefits to which they are entitled next we'll hear from Richard Schuler director of innovative Partnerships Children's Health watch children's top watch is a non-partisan network of Pediatricians Public Health researchers and Children's Health and policy experts that are committed to improving Children's Health in America in this role Richard leads the cross-sector of policy work and initiatives of the organization he identifies and executes a wide range of projects grounded in research and policy analysis to inform decision makers and improve Children's Health Richard participated in our eitc policy imputation lab and so we're excited to have him here and finally we will hear from Rebecca Thompson the director of the network excuse me director of network building at Prosperity now Prosperity now is a national non-profit intermediary whose work makes it possible for millions of people to Achieve Financial Security and contribute to an opportunity economy in this role Rebecca leads the taxpayer opportunity Network which connects strengthens and inspires community tax programs so that they can more effectively and efficiently deliver critical tax assistance to low and moderate income taxpayers next slide so so excited to hear from our panelists I am going to kick us off by sharing some framing on Health Equity social determinants of Health uh describing and describe the connection between health and earned income tax credits I will also share some tools and resources developed by the CDC Foundation that CDC used as part of the eitc policy implementation lab next slide Health Equity is Central to cdc's work as the nation's public health agency and refers to a world where every person has the opportunity to attain his or her full health potential and no one is disadvantaged from achieving this because of social position or other socially determined circumstances we know that differences in health are striking in communities with poor social determinants of Health such as unstable housing low-income unsafe neighborhoods or substandard education the goal is that by applying what we know about social determinants of health and providing tools for action on this work we can not only improve population Health but also reduce these Health disparities and begin to address health next slide social determinants of Health are conditions in the environment where people are born live learn work play worship and age that affect a wide range of Health functioning and quality of life outcomes and risks healthy people 2030 identifies economic stability as one of the five domains of social determinants and one example that contributes to economic stability is income in the United States one in ten people live in poverty there is a well-established relationship between income and health especially between poverty and poor health income can change people's risk for one or more chronic diseases like heart disease diabetes and stroke many low-income families are unable to afford health insurance and health care and they frequently do not have enough income to live in safe communities with adequate housing in schools in many cases low-income families do not have access to healthy food Parks or other physical facilities all of which contribute additionally strong evidence consistently links low income to adverse childhood experiences or Aces exposures and children's long-term Health educational and social outcomes next slide this is the public health impact pyramid a framework for Action it shows the potential impact of different types of Public Health interventions at the base or interventions that have the greatest potential for health they can reach entire communities at once and require less individual effort at the bottom you can see high five referenced I-5 initiative focuses on social determinants of health and includes 14 evidence-based interventions seen here in the two boxes on the slide earned income tax credits or eitcs are one of them high five was developed in response to requests for information and assistance from public health officials at the local and state levels of government it fulfills an unmet need among cdc's partners for targeted scientific data and Analysis on sdoh for health interventions as well as evidence briefs that can lead to positive Health outcomes in five years or less the bottom tier is where eitc sit that address income social determinants of health and has that greatest potential for achieving positive health impact and achieving Health Equity evidence is critical to success yet to work to address social determinants we must engage in work across sectors this work is hard and takes time to look for opportunities for collaborations that meet our population health goals so I'd like to share more about what eitcs are and cdc's work on building collaborations to address social determinants next slide an earn income tax credit is a benefit for working people with low to moderate income designed to incentivize work and help reduce poverty particularly for families with children it's an income credit that can be levied at the federal state and local levels in order to reduce the tax burden for low to moderate income working people an eitc can act as an additional source of income when applied as a refundable credit like the federal eitc and many state emtcs for example a single mom with two kids who works minimum wage earns about earning about fifteen thousand dollars a year she would qualify for the federal eitc at a maximum of five thousand nine hundred and twenty dollars with a 10 10 refundable state eitc provided that she didn't have additional tax liability state tax liability she would receive about 580 additional dollars that translates to two weeks wages or a month worth of groceries or half months rent so by reducing poverty and increasing income for Working Families eitc has been linked to positive Health outcomes particularly for infants and mothers CDC developed evidence briefs for eitc and has worked of the last few years to learn how Public Health can help other sectors implement eitc so I'd like to start to talk a little bit about the high five partnership Consortium project led by the CDC Foundation who worked with the Public Health Institute and was funded by Robert Wood Johnson Foundation next slide the focus of the Hi-Fi partnership Consortium project was to help Public Health practitioners build capacity to implement community-wide interventions by learning the needs of practitioners and developing developing some actionable tools CDC served as subject matter experts on policy implementation and social determinants for the project the lessons learned from the stakeholders involved helped to increase understanding about how Partners working on income insecurity and public health can work together the high five partnership Consortium goals included describing contexts that underline the development and implementation of eitc identifying mechanisms that might explain why certain examples or cases are successful for this work and identifying ways that public health has informed and supported eitc policies generally and as a tool to improve the social determinants of Health next slide to make project goals the project team conducted a series of key informant interviews with stakeholders in four States including California New Mexico Ohio and Louisiana all the key informants represented organizations dedicated to ending poverty the project team then hosted a convening or an eitc deep dive on June 26 2019 with participant participants from California Georgia Kansas Massachusetts New Mexico and Virginia the purpose of this deep dive was to explore practices related to the eitc policy development and implementation and to discuss the role of Public Health next slide as a result of this stakeholder process CDC Foundation developed products to increase awareness about eitc as a health intervention and to inform Public Health practice one of these was the eitc action guy designed to describe options for further engaging Public Health with those working on income insecurity it can be found um in a in addition to a comprehensive final report on the CDC foundation's website that's listed here on the slide and it also details lessons from the field from the high five Consortium project next slide here's an example of some of the content in the eitc action guide the guide includes information on eitc's how eitcs keep more families and children above the poverty line and they're linked with positive Health outcomes especially among mothers and children and the CDC foundation's goal for this guide is to educate Public Health practitioners on the benefits of eitcs and provide them with the data that can be used to inform families partners and decision makers next slide despite the health benefits of eitcs that I've described one in five eligible workers don't claim their eitc the guide describes some actions that practitioners can take to increase access including raising awareness and use of federal eitc with reminders Flyers social media messages and referrals or use using the tax season as an opportunity to inform people about free tax preparation assistance next slide the guide also describes actions for public health to collaborate with others working to address poverty including reaching out to anti-poverty and child-serving groups or local economic development organizations are hosting a volunteer tax preparation service in in a particular organization's area so CDC was very interested in learning from this eitc action guide and test what the CDC Foundation had learned with a set of practitioners through a pilot eitc policy implementation lab next slide the CDC partnered with the national network of Public Health institutes and the Georgia Health policy Center to launch a pilot eitc policy implementation the purpose of the eitc policy lab is to build Public Health practitioners capacity to engage in multi-sector partner coalitions and Implement evidence-based policies that Advance population Health Improvement the lab had representatives from five states Arizona California Massachusetts Utah and Louisiana all who are working to engage in cross-sector collaboration to increase the uptake of eitc in their locales so we're excited to share some of the learnings from our experts who participated and who supported the eitc policy implementation lab as well as case examples that highlight options to consider when implementing this effective intervention next slide I'd really like to acknowledge that many colleagues have supported this work along the way in aiding our learning next slide as well as a warm thanks to those who've contributed to furthering our knowledge and participating in the eitc policy implementation lab next slide many thanks for your time for joining us today I look forward to hearing from our participants um our panelists back to you Wendy thank you Elizabeth that was great now we'll turn things over to Annelise Grimm from code for America hello everyone welcome um thanks for having me my name is annelies found the director or associate director of getyourrefund.org at code for America and it's my privilege to speak to you alongside our really wonderful Partners at Children's Health watch and prosperity now like Elizabeth said code for America is a non-profit organization that partners with government to strengthen the delivery of Public Services through human-centered technology we currently work on snap in California benefits Integrations in a few States criminal record clearance and now tax benefits excited to talk to you about that today and we chose to work on the earned income tax credit because it's the biggest public benefit for workers it provides flexible cash that allows people to address their most painful problems we really wanted to emphasis that flexible cash next slide please so we know that workers need flexible cash and there's this huge source of cash that's available that earned income tax credit but many low-income households as we just mentioned one out of five are missing out on this money and nationally what that means is that low income households are missing out on about 10.5 billion dollars a year that's building with a b and that's an average of about thirteen hundred dollars for families in what we call the eitc participation Gap next slide please I would love to give an example of what that looks like for one family in California just to really drive this point home so if this family hadn't filed for the past two years last year they would have been eligible for five thousand seven hundred and seventy nine dollars total across their credit so that's the eitc the Cali ITC the additional child tax credit and in California a special credit called the young child tax credit next slide please and then for 2020 they would have been eligible for another 5 79 with those same credits next slide please and then when you add in the economic impact payments also known as stimulus checks and the advanced child tax credit it really really starts to add up so we see here the two stimulus payments the stimulus payments for their dependent California had their own Golden State stimulus and then looking at the advanced child tax credit which there's lots of Buzz around today um adding all those things up it's about 19 658 dollars for that family which is close to tripling their income for the year so this is a huge transformative amount of money for people and if you add to the normal eitc participation Gap that we see every year the five million people who are likely to be ill missing out on the stimulus we're estimating there's over 16 billion dollars left on the table by low-income families who really need and deserve that money so in short doing your taxes has always been important now it's more important than ever next slide please so who is missing out the best data that we have is from California and stimulus payments so I'll talk about that data as with many of the programs we work on at code for America those who need the benefits the most are most likely to be missing out so in this case 25 of eligible safety net enrollees are missing out on the stimulus in California and safety net enrollees identified as Native American or Alaska native are the highest risk for being in the Gap and Hispanic or latinx and roles make up the largest share of the Gap so those are folks we're particularly trying to make sure we reach next slide please and we see a lot of disparity nationally in participation as well this is 2017 participation by state with the yellow showing states that have the largest gap so California is a place we focus not just because it's where we're based but because there's a huge participation Gap in California next slide please so like I said before one out of five households are missing out we wanted to understand if there's so much money available why are people leaving this money on the table there must be something deeper going on here and so we conducted user research in California in Colorado and started to see some really clear patterns and why eligible people file or don't file so why don't people file they don't think they have to file their taxes and they don't realize that they might benefit from doing so is a big piece second this actually kind of surprised us but um in retrospect we should have expected it emotional hardship interrupted their life so we saw a lot of people who stopped filing because of things like job loss a death of a family member or divorce it really disrupted their situation and made it hard for them to file and frankly seeing themselves represented on paper in a way that was um different than how they wanted to see themselves also contributed to them not being able to file um third being overwhelmed by trying to understand the ambiguous and sometimes negative consequences of filing and wanting to know how that might impact other public benefits or their broader financial situation so um people being fearful of filing and how it might play out in other parts of their financial story and then lastly trustworthy affordable help is hard to find where they are when they need it and looking at all of these factors we can really see and we also see in the data consistently that Outreach alone is important but it's not enough to overcome these challenges we really need to get people better Services next slide so we took in all that research and all the stories that we heard and we used that to inform our service at getyourrefund.org and we knew we had to
build something that was free and trustworthy so those two things don't have to be mutually exclusive people expressed greater trust and free tax help that's linked to non-profits or with government you need to be clarifying people need to be able to ask questions often there was one question that someone had that blocked them from filing once you answered that question they were confident moving forward with filing their taxes it needed to be thorough so we ran into a lot of folks who had complicated situations needing to file for several years or had self-employment income or scholarships we needed to build something that would be able to serve everyone and they need to be accessible for people whenever they are wherever they are ready so if someone's ready at 3am when they finally get their kids to bed and they are up looking at their tax documents we wanted to have something that they could tap into and among the available services that we looked at we did a landscape analysis of what the services are out there we saw that Vita the volunteer income tax assistance program provides that trustworthy clarifying and thorough service and has an accuracy rate Which is higher than paid preparers very high quality service and very trusted in community but Vita struggled to meet demand and so we thought that potentially Digital Services could help buy to expand and we decided to Pilot fully online intake and case management with vita for the 2020 tax season and get your refund was born next slide please so now I'll skip ahead a little bit just to tell you what get your refund currently supports to serve the diverse needs of clients so we have a Vita site location finder for people who are seeking fully in-person Services keeping in mind that Vita sites are often seasonal so service can be limited in the off season we also have what we call valet Vita which is a way for clients to drop off documents with the Vita provider get those taxes prepared and then come back to pick them up so it's a shorter wait time than waiting to have the tax prepared in real time we have digital intake which is a way to submit all of your tax documents online that's at getyourrefund.org and then you work with a volunteer over the phone to prepare your taxes and submit them and then we also have DIY with help so this is free tax prep software and I just want to emphasize there are a lot of things out there that say that they're free that can trick people in certain situations into paying and so um we are very thoughtful about making sure we have a actually free service there through tax layer um and it's a great resource for people when Vita sites are closed or if there's a capacity limitation the DIY service is a way for people to consistently be able to file their taxes and then we have service routing so that's chat support on our website where people can ask questions whether it's about the CTC the child tax credit uh stimulus other tax related issues we can provide referrals and direct people to the service that would be most appropriate and then very big news yesterday we launched get ctc.org again that's get ctc.org which is a website designed specifically for families who are seeking to access the new Advanced child tax credit next slide please so what happened in 2021 it was a wild year in the tech space for a lot of reasons but um we were very successful in scaling get your refund and being able to serve a lot of clients so we worked with 106 fighter Partners across 40 States and were able to serve Partners in all or serve clients in all 50 states we had 7 000 users in the system so that's Vita staff and volunteers who are helping people prepare their taxes remotely we prepared 83 000 returns and delivered at least 313 million that doesn't include the advanced CTC so that's just in the state and federal tax credits that were delivered for the 2028 season um and then we conducted qualitative and quantitative research to really learn how to effectively reach Don filers overcome what we call the document burden so how people access their tax documents and ID documents verifying identity and then scaling high quality virtual support and based on that experience of serving over 800 000 clients through some form of our services at getyourefund.org we
learned a few key things that I want to share with you because I think um some of them were surprises for us so first again we saw that broad Outreach alone is insufficient to convert non-filers into filers and Outreach really needs to be targeted informed by data and paired with high quality accessible services second that current identity verification processes unnecessarily exclude marginalized filers and we need to build inclusive ID verification processes that yes prevent ID theft but make sure that they don't block families from accessing benefits such as currently unfortunately happening a lot um and third many of the most marginalized non-filers can't complete a full tax return even with the support of Vita right now so it's incredibly important to create streamlined processes to allow nonpiers to access benefits like the child tax credit and economic impact payments without filing a full tax return and then fourth there's a role for community-based Navigators community-based organizations public benefits agencies we want to see something similar to the Affordable Care Act Navigators where community-based folks who are trusted can help hard to reach clients navigate access to tax benefits so how can you help us out in reaching non-filers in your community government Partnerships are by far the best way for us to reach people and we'd love to partner with you for the next tax season there are two key ways you can do that one is through Outreach Partnerships we are focusing our Outreach efforts on families that are likely to be in the participation Gap whether that's for eitc the stimulus or the child tax credit and that's statistically most likely to be folks who are on public benefits so um we want to make sure we're reaching out to you all there um and we can provide a unique URL that will allow us to track your Outreach so that can create a feedback loop where if you're doing something on social media or you're putting it on your website or you're sending out letters to community we can give you different URLs for people to type in that will allow us to show you which of your Outreach mechanisms are working most effectively so that you can really reinvest in those and focus on what's working and then we also have Navigator Partnerships and this is really the next level of partnership with getyourrefund.org it's designed to help reach clients that can't access get your refund on their own whether that's due to language barriers technology trusts or other factors it can be done in person or remotely and our hope here is that it will make our Vita sites even more efficient by ensuring that the clients are truly ready for tax prep so we want to make sure they have their tax documents they have their ID documents and when they're uploading all their information into get your refund it's really a case that's ready to be prepared by our tax preparers and for the most robust version of this um it requires about three or four hours of training to be fully trained and certified to answer basic questions there are also lighter left versions of this as well that are sort of in between Outreach and referral and navigation um and would be happy to talk more about that so I will leave it there thank you so much for having me and looking forward to the conversation hi good afternoon everybody I'm rich Steward from Children's Health watch based at Boston Medical Center and I'm thrilled to be here with you all this afternoon and uh today I will be presenting a state level Journey on how Massachusetts came to reimagine its state level eitc as a policy to improve Children's Health we can go to the next slide so over the next 10 minutes we're gonna I'll share this case study best presented in three stages first the successes I'll share the history of the state eitc in Massachusetts and the ways in which it was reimagined and improved over time and then I'll talk a little bit about the sustainability so what is the uh Power behind collaboration among diverse stakeholders to have an outsized impact when the rubber finally meets the road and then third I'll touch on the systems the levers to make sure that implementation is successful by institutionalizing improvements to the eitc and also addressing barriers that we inevitably find over time with implementation so the three things that I'm going to focus on this afternoon we can go to the next slide like many other states in the U.S Massachusetts has a state level or an income tax credit that essentially acts as a boost or a piggyback to the federal eitc and for many years at least since the 1990s the Massachusetts eitc had been set at 15 of the Federal Credit and I have to give credit to a number of agencies and institutions who had done research on the effectiveness and the impact of the eitc especially in reducing poverty among recipients and taxpayers and it was really not until 2015 which is a another story for another day but it was a policy window that had opened up in the Commonwealth that really motivated lawmakers to reconsider that uh state level eitc and increase it from 15 percent uh to 23 percent of the Federal eitc in 2015. and one aspect of why that was successful was a number of groups coming together in this case forming the Healthy Families eitc coalition to help raise awareness and understanding that the Earned Income Tax Credit is not just a policy that reduces poverty and lifts many families out of poverty but also improves health and so bringing together legal aid agencies policy think tanks anti-poverty groups Community Development corporations social service agencies health care agencies even state and local public health commissions and most importantly families themselves we were able to reframe the Earned Income Tax Credit is not just an anti-poverty program but a child health tax credit so I mentioned that there had been you know Decades of research on the effectiveness of the eitc there had also been research on how things like adverse childhood experiences toxic stress health related social needs are often rooted in the interplay between poverty economic insecurity stress depression and material hardships but at that time a small and growing body of evidence was linking that to the earned income tax credit and so the Healthy Families eitc Coalition shown a light on how the eitc had begun to show that it was associated with the reduced incidence of low birth weight births that children and families receiving the eitc had better health outcomes in other ways mothers were reporting less instances of depression and stress better nutrition outcomes as well and this body of evidence has grown since 2015 and I have to give a lot of credit to the CDC and the high five initiative in making this uh sort of a national platform that the eitc is linked to health so we really stood on the shoulders of many researchers over time and since 2015 the state has increased the eitc and improved it in a few other ways in 2017 we were the first state to expand eligibility of the state eitc to survivors of domestic violence fleeing their abusers in 2018 most recently the credit was increased to 30 percent of the Federal Credit where it currently stands today we can go to the next slide so I shared a little bit about the history of the policy how it evolved how the perception of it changed from anti-poverty to anti-poverty and health Improvement and in order to maintain that awareness and build on that success sustainability became a really important factor for us and so I mentioned the work of the Healthy Families eitc Coalition we're really just one group out of uh many and there are three I would say that are really active in the state three distinct groups working to improve the well-being of Massachusetts families one of those groups is Massachusetts Essentials for childhood which is a collaboration of public and private stakeholders across multiple sectors that are focused on addressing the public health problem of child abuse and neglect funded by the Centers for Disease Control and led by the Massachusetts Department of Health the Healthy Families eitc Coalition really focuses a lot on the messaging awareness and even policy analysis aspect of this work and then most recently in Massachusetts as the state has moved from a fee-for-service model of Health Care to uh performance-based payment model that mainly relies on the establishment of accountable care organizations or acos across the state Healthcare has really stepped up to the plate in acknowledging uh and taking into account many health related social needs including Financial instability and working very hard to both screen intervene address Financial insecurity and other health related social needs in part by providing application assistance to the Earned Income Tax Credit and so through Public Health through Coalition building and through Health Care we've been able to really sustain a lot of these Partnerships and have an outsize effect that any one of our agencies would not be able to have otherwise you can go to the next slide so now I think what you all would like to hear is what are we doing what is working what are the levers that we have access to to increase uptake in the eitc and to make sure that it's a successful policy um and there are four things that I think that are really important that transfer to any situation in any state uh number one the importance of the volunteer income tax assistance sites across the Commonwealth are um indispensable there are approximately 80 of them uh in operation across the state of Massachusetts and um you know a policy is really only as good as its implementation and to ensure that the eitc lands in the bank account and the wallets of taxpayers in Massachusetts it's important that they have access to free tax prep especially for the low income tax filers and so Vita sites are an incredibly important aspect of this sort of systems approach to improving the eitc second is community I talked about the three sort of big groups that are really working together um at a Statewide and systems level Essentials for childhood and the Healthy Families eitc Coalition and a number of accountable care organizations hospitals and Health Systems we were lucky to participate together in the cdc's eitc implementation lab which really gave us a sense of Community Learning and we were also able to learn from what other states are doing so education and community building is incredibly important and then messaging as well so earned media attention from newspapers like the Boston Globe and television stations has really taken this to the public sphere and the public Consciousness which is incredibly important uh lastly strong Partnerships so the eitc as many of you I'm sure are aware is sort of one piece of the puzzle another very important piece of the puzzle especially most recently is the child tax credit as well as the stimulus the economic impact payments that have happened over the past year or so and so we've worked with groups like Greater Boston Legal Services Mass law reform Institute Mass cap and the shaw Family Foundation to create a website findyourfunds.org for folks in Massachusetts to understand how they can take advantage and receive the child tax credit especially if they're not they're non-filers or they don't earn enough to typically file a tax return so Partnerships to raise awareness and get the message out to the public is also incredibly important and something that we're focused on we can go to the next slide and so now we're at the point of thinking about not just what we do but what matters what's going to have the biggest impact so we're focused on continuing to develop our messaging to a variety of audiences especially Healthcare audiences um Elizabeth mentioned earlier the commitment to addressing the social determinants of Health it's having a big impact in the healthcare space and most of the social determinants of Health that are the area of focus that Health Systems and hospitals are identifying when they screen their patients that are food insecurity and housing instability Transportation issues and those are all rooted in poverty in many ways and so not only is it important to connect families to snap WIC the federal nutrition program's emergency food assistance Transportation assistance and housing supports it's also important to connect families to the Earned Income Tax Credit the child tax credit and all those financial stability tools that we have at our disposal and I think that can be Amplified even more so developing messaging to Health Care Providers and partners is incredibly important educating stakeholders on the eitc is another aspect that we're focused on policies need education and awareness to be successful so how is this a policy that is going to address racial income and wealth gaps that's something that we're thinking very much about convening the providers the tax providers and Vita sites to really beef up their ability to provide virtual access has become a huge focus in the past year there are critical link and we need to focus on that and as well as making the process easier for households themselves by closing the digital divide both in terms of tax prep but also virtual Health Care visits so those are some of the things that we're thinking about in terms of what matters how we can have an impact in the future and then we can go to the next slide and so this is oh we'll go back one slide so this is how uh we're planning to actually uh to do this work together and these are strategies that we identified by participating in the eitc policy implementation lab so number one is to continue the partnership and the work of the Healthy Families eitc coalition to build understanding and awareness and provide analysis on the policies and then two support those on the ground tax prep providers Mass cap is a Statewide umbrella agency that manages a number of Community Action agencies that run Vita sites they're incredibly important as well as the Boston tax help Coalition that also manages a number of Statewide or city-wide Vita sites so making sure that we're really lifting up the free tax prep providers is something that we're focused on going forward and then lastly bringing Health Care Providers deeper into the default there have been really amazing contributions by organizations like street cred and the accountable care organizations whether it's through Boston Children's Hospital or Boston Medical Center or out in Springfield Massachusetts making sure that Healthcare Providers are part of the conversation is incredibly important and so these are the ways that we're focused on implementation going forward thank you so much thank you Richard now we'll have our final presenter Rebecca Thompson from Prosperity now good afternoon thank you so much Wendy if we can go to the next slide good afternoon everyone I'm Rebecca Thompson I am the director of network building at Prosperity now thank you again for the opportunity to be here with you today and good afternoon again to all of my co-pamelists background staff and all of you attendees it's really great to be here with you I'm hoping that I can share a little bit of information um with you today that will you will find to be beneficial so Prosperity now is on a mission to ensure that everyone in our country has a clear path to financial stability wealth and prosperity next slide please the network building team within Prosperity now Fosters peer connections and provides strategic targeted and meaningful engagement opportunities to build strength and relationships with our Community Partners and stakeholders as we work to advance federal and state and solutions systems oriented solutions that limit racial economic Justice now taxes are a critical element of our country's economy and we know that tax time represents a significant moment in the financial lives of many Americans particularly low to moderate income households and we've heard a lot today about the difference in the significance that a tax refund can make on many of those households the taxpayer opportunity Network connects strengthens and expires inspires community tax programs and our goals are really to increase the number of low-income taxpayers who access free high quality tax preparation services and to increase the number of low-income taxpayers who take advantage of financial capability services and improve their household Financial Security at tax time we do this in a number of ways particularly to accomplish these goals we provide tools information resources and Foster peer connections to our Vita programs and among our Vita programs and stakeholders next slide please so here's a recap of the 2021 filing season during the 2021 filing season we saw a significant reduction in the number of Vita sites that were open to provide free tax prep Services due primarily to the impact of covet 19. a lot of our
partners pivoted from what had been a predominantly in-person face-to-face Service delivery model to offering a menu of Service delivery options to meet the need in those in their communities so we like we saw a lot of our writer Partners partnering with Annelise and her team with getyourrefund.org we also saw a lot of Partners implementing their own virtual processes at the local level um many partners shifted to offering more do-it-yourself services such as myfreetaxes.com IRS free file and other facilitated self-access options which encourage filers to prepare their own returns with assistance then we saw a lot of Partners shifting to a drop-off model wherein taxpayers would come drop off their documents either have them scanned or copied leave and return within the span of a week or so and pick up their completed return and then still there were some of our partners who offered limited in-person Services primarily by appointment only now compounding all of the complexities associated with navigating the transition from traditional and alternative Service delivery models were all of these special considerations that occurred during the filing season either at the end of 2020 or during the 2021 filing season so of course we had covid-19 but then what we also saw was a lot of taxpayers presenting with prior year returns as well of course there were issues with the economic impact payments and the recovery rebate credit the eitc look back unemployment compensation additional premium tax credit all of these were factors that came into play during the filing season which our volunteers not only had to navigate a new Service delivery models but also new tax laws which seem to be changing at the spur of the moment and and our volunteers really had to do a lot of learning on the Fly Midstream during the filing season to ensure that we were able to continue to prepare accurate returns next slide please so in March of 2020 as we noticed that many of our sites were shutting down and closing their doors due to covet 19. one of the first things that we did was host a listening session and our team pulled together our partners from our Network on in an afternoon session to talk about what this meant for them as well as what the challenges they foresaw would be in order to in opening reopening their sites and continuing to deliver Services during the 2020 filing season and we also listened out for opportunities based on what we learned and build building on what we learned from that listening session in March in which we also hosted a subsequent session in the end of April we decided um to take and really pour our resources into addressing the barriers to successfully implementing virtual Vita so we sought to help our help our partners make this shift we also work to ensure and expand access to Vita programs for low-income taxpayers so we were focused primarily on the most underserved markets and the most unders served tax filers who had not yet been to a Vita site and then finally we were in wanted to ensure that economically vulnerable households and five of the nation's most vulnerable communities could access high quality tax prep services for free that they could claim the eitc and other tax credits and and access those ancillary supports that are often provided at Vita sites to improve their household financial help during the pandemic next slide please [Music] we're able to provide 300 000 in technology grants to Vita Partners to 38 Vita Partners these technology grants were specifically designed to help those Partners who in particular were transitioning to partner with code for America and get your refund dot org and the virtual Service delivery models so we provided those resources to the program so that they could purchase computers monitors mice keyboards internet access what have you whatever it was that our their volunteers needed in order to participate and continue to deliver services additionally we provided five hundred thousand dollars in unrestricted funds to 25 Vita Partners to provide some sort of sustaining resources for them and their organizations as they shifted to Alternative Service delivery models as well in addition we provided um technical assistance to two cohorts one of ten programs specifically targeted towards virtual Vita and transitioning their services to the get your refund platform and another to ensuring and expanding access to clients in those most vulnerable communities across the country and we also developed a toolkit for our partners to use to support their transition as well next slide please so from our ensuring and expanding access Grant and project we've been conducting some research one of our goals has been to really close the gap the eitc participation Gap and the first step in that has really been identifying the barriers and identifying who is not claiming the eitcc so from our preliminary research you know there are a few categories that we have identified for folks who are not claiming the eitc they're existing filers who may be filing the paper in return and don't know about the eitc that and aren't aware that they're eligible we have existing filers who may be answering questions incorrectly on the software on doing electronic returns and so they may have answered a question wrong and not claimed a dependent which would automatically you know kick them out of eligibility for the the eitc and then finally there's paid preparer error and so a lot of times that people who are preparing Returns the paid preparers are not required to obtain the same level of certification as our Vital volunteers are and so they are subject to error and they actually do experience higher error rates than we do in the Vita program so those four are existing followers among the non-filers who may be eligible for the eitc but not claiming it we identified those who may have may not have a filing requirement so they may not earn enough to be required to file a tax return they don't know so they don't know that they're eligible they don't know that they have a requirement to file until they don't file and then there are those who don't want to file those who are legally required and they understand fully their obligation to file a tax return but as annalize mentioned earlier for whatever reason they may not be required they may not they may decide not to file next slide please so according to the IRS eitc Central these are these are some of the things that we need to be on the lookout for for those people who are eligible for the eitc but fall within that participation Gap it's likely going to be rural residents people who are self-employed those with disabilities people without qualifying children people who are non-english proficient grandparents raising their grandchildren and of course households who are in a state of flux for whatever reason unemployment divorce and a multitude of reasons particularly over the course of the last year next slide please so we conducted a focus group um with this cohort of six Vita programs who are across five states so we're partnering with programs in South Carolina in the low country and United Way of Greenville County in Georgia Central Georgia which is the Macon area in Louisiana in the Baton Rouge area we're partnering with Capital Area United Way Arkansas the United Way of the ouachita's and Texas and On the Border United Way of Southern Cameron County so from this focus group we identified a couple of key themes which I think is is I'm reiterating here as as my other co-panelists have already stated um the first one is trust is an issue when reaching out to underserved populations to non-filers and underserved populations and so it is a big issue it is key when we are looking to reach these populations and particularly to bring them a new service um that it it's in very important that they hear it from a trusted partner finally Partnerships and relationships with the trusted Partners who are connected to the non-filers and underserved populations are key this is particularly for our Vita Partners um who are looking to to reach more of the underserved populations um it's essential that they have this the solid foundation relationships and Partnerships with those trusted Partners who are serving the populations that they're looking to serve next slide please so here are a few ways that you can help there we like to put things in low touch medium touch High touch and some of these have already been stated for you today um but for low touch options or really just spread the word you know put up flyers in in you know in your space share messages information celebrate eitc Awareness Day post banners on your website um use whatever resources you can leverage your platform to spread the word that's probably the easiest thing that you can do the medium touch option is really makes make room make space I myself am a Vita volunteer although my site was closed this filing season but my site is actually in our County Social Services Department so they make space for us on Saturdays so if you can make space then that's wonderful if your office is somewhere where you know potential Vita clients are coming anywhere any way and it's a place that they're familiar it's a place that they trust then that makes it much easier for the buyer partner to be able to deliver and offer services there also join a local Vita Coalition make sure you know who your writer partner is in your area there will be instrumental um to helping you to reach and and find the right services in the in the right way to deliver services to your audiences the high touch is transform your space if you've got a spare conference room you've got some extra space um transform it and allow you know your local Vita program to come in and borrow your space during the filing season and so that you know the people who come into to receive services at your office can also have their taxes prepared there as well and of course you can always engage your staff as volunteers encourage them to volunteer and find ways to integrate the messaging around eitc and free tax prep Services into your daily workflow really helps to make sure that the messages are heard and that they're delivered consistently consistently next slide please so here are a few more steps now soon and later so now is a great time where you know filing season is over it's a great time to connect reach out and connect with your Vita Partners in your community it's a great time to talk with them about Baseline data like where is the need in your community identify where the most vulnerable and underserved populations are in your community and what resources are available and needed to serve them and then you can choose your own adventure this is a great time of year June is great to start playing a great time to start planning for the next filing season and so you can choose your own adventure decide what it is that you have the capacity to do in the next filing season low medium or high touch you know all you can do is spread the word then make a commitment and do that that's wonderful um every little bit helps and then also you want to define success so what will success look like after you've gone through the next six months of planning and then implementing during the filing season what what kind of outcomes would you like to see soon you want to develop that strategy and look for additional ways to support and engaged and then later you know after the 2022 filing season you want to collect the data evaluate the results and start planning and getting ready for the next one next slide please so looking ahead um what we have coming down the pike as an organization is that we will complete our research on eitc Outreach and barriers to participation participation barriers and Outreach strategy and we will be releasing that later on in the fall this year in September October time frame of this year hopefully in time to help our partners to be able to digest the information and incorporate what we found into their strategies and their Outreach strategies for the next filing season thank you next slide please I think that's all thank you so much thank you so much Rebecca and another thank you to all of our presenters for your time today we've truly appreciate it now we will move on to our question and answer portion we will start with some questions that were submitted during the registration period for today's webinar our first question for our panelists is can State earned income tax credits help prevent adverse childhood experiences would anyone like to answer that I want I can take a a first um opportunity to answer that and again I wanted to um Echo Wendy's thanks to all the panelists I learned so much it was um really fun and a delight um I'll kick us off and then others please pipe in um I will say that there's research that's supported by our cdc's division of violence prevention that shows refundable State eidc's whole promise for preventing certain adverse childhood experiences or Aces including child abuse and neglect and exposure to adult psychological distress and suicides there's a evidence brief I believe that's posted on our high five website and you can share in a follow-up email um they recognize that there's more research needed to understand how State eitcs affect other Aces and to evaluate those changes in eligibility over time I'll also acknowledge when we think beyond that there's there is a body of research at Emory University um looking at the impacts of refundable credits on States um and showing um positive associations with refundable credits at around 10 percent for um uh birth outcomes uh I'll also mention more broadly um uh not just stated eitcs but in federal eitc some emerging emerging research and our centers for National Center for birth defects and developmental disabilities they've conducted research showing that children and families receiving the eitc this is including the federal so fewer behavioral health problems including anxiety and depression so we can share follow-up on that emerging research as well are there others that have anything to add to that yeah I'll just add you know I think you did a really great job Elizabeth of kind of laying out the research that exists and and I fully support that and I you know we're seeing the the same things in Massachusetts through the work of Essentials for childhood and the work of Children's Health watch and I'd say you know for um folks uh tuning in and and researchers tuning in I would be really interested to see the the findings that are will be coming out around Pilots um and that have already come out on highlights of the universal basic income guaranteed minimum income in the ways in which things like the eitc both federal and state the CTC the economic impact payments all coalesce together and have an impact on you know preventing or mitigating Aces so I think there's evidence out there and certainly the need for more in the future foreign for our panelists um we've been interested in the connection between eitc and health for years but have had trouble raising awareness with stakeholders until recently can you speak to any successes and implementation and awareness raising Rebecca would you like to don't mean to put you on the spot oh I was gonna say it looked like Richard or Elizabeth wanted to chime in oh you know any annually the IRS hosts um eitc awareness today and we do a lot of work to help to to raise awareness and really lift that up and provide the messages and resources for our partners to really um Advocate and raise awareness around the eitc I will say that the most success the most success that I have seen with regard to actually impacting people and making converting eitc eligible non-filers or non-claimants to you know eitc eligibles who have claimed the tax return claim that credit um and filed a return the most success that we've seen has come one from from last year with the economic impact payments um as a vehicle to ensure that people were filing returns and getting into the system and then the second has been through those trust and partner relationships from people hearing directly from someone who they are trusting to help with you know whatever issue or concern it is that their face that they're dealing with hearing directly from a trusted partner about the value of the eitcc and getting that encouragement to have their tax returns filed has been like the most successful um methods that that I have seen so far among our partners yeah I'll just add you know in the context of Boston Medical Center the street cred model I think has been really impactful it speaks to what Rebecca was saying about trusted Partners you know coming in to take your child i
2022-12-18 07:16
