Tax filing and take-up: Experimental evidence on tax preparation outreach and benefit claiming

• 成果类型: Article
• 署名作者: Goldin, Jacob; Homonoff, Tatiana; Javaid, Rizwan; Schafer, Brenda
• 署名单位: Stanford University; National Bureau of Economic Research; New York University
• 刊物名称: JOURNAL OF PUBLIC ECONOMICS
• ISSN/ISSBN: 0047-2727
• DOI: 10.1016/j.jpubeco.2021.104550
• 发表日期: 2022
• 关键词: Tax filing; program participation; Earned Income Tax Credit; Child Tax Credit

摘要

The U.S. federal government, states, and non-profits all devote substantial resources to increasing take-up of refundable tax credits like the Earned Income Tax Credit (EITC) and Child Tax Credit (CTC) through educational outreach. We study a different approach to increasing take-up: policies that encourage tax filing. In a large field experiment, we find that IRS letters about free tax preparation modestly increased filing, with a large share of the new filers claiming the EITC and the CTC. The results suggest policies that increase filing can be an effective way to increase take-up of tax-administered social benefits, even policies that do not raise awareness of the benefit itself. (c) 2021 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.