Tax Filing and Take-Up: Experimental Evidence on Tax Preparation Outreach and EITC Participation

Jacob Goldin, Tatiana Homonoff, Rizwan Javaid and Brenda Schafer

No 28398, NBER Working Papers from National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc

Abstract: Governments and non-profits devote substantial resources to increasing take-up of the Earned Income Tax Credit (EITC) through educational outreach. We study a different approach: 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. 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 or directly target the benefit in other ways.

JEL-codes: H24 I38 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2021-01
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-exp and nep-pbe
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