Tatiana Homonoff, New York University

Tax Filing and Take-Up: Experimental Evidence on Tax Preparation Outreach and Benefit Claiming (joint w/Jacob Goldin, Rizwan Javaid, and Brenda Schafer).

Abstract: 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 resultssuggest 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.

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We strongly encourage in-person attendance in 141 Sage. However, we recognize that there will be Covid-related reasons why people sometimes cannot attend in-person, and thus a remote attendance option will also be available.

If you are interested in participating in this seminar, please register at:

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Note: If you have previously registered for the Fall 2021 Behavioral Economics Workshop, there is no need to re-register. Please note that registration is limited to the Cornell community.

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