In Boston $9 million of the federal Earned Income Tax Credit (EITC) went unclaimed in 1999 and thousands of Boston residents, who did claim their EITC credit, paid high fees for tax preparation and exorbitant interest rates for Rapid Access Loans. Mayor Menino and the Boston EITC Coalition spearheaded a public awareness campaign to ensure that residents were informed of the benefit and offered free tax preparation at 16 neighborhood sites across the city. The EITC Electronic Filing and Technology Access Project will develop a network of Community Technology Centers (CTC) as outreach, referral, and processing sites to supplement the city EITC Coalition’s free tax help sites. Targeting the 63 CTCs that are Boston affiliates of CTCNet, the country’s oldest and largest association of technology access centers, the project goal is to return $1,000,000 in federal and state taxes, including $300,000 in Earned Income Tax Credits, to low-income citizens and neighborhoods of Boston for the 2003 tax year.
The project will expand and customize the I-CAN! Online filing system developed by the Legal Society of Orange Country, California. I-CAN! is a web-based application that allows taxpayers to easily claim their federal Earned Income Tax Credit and complete their returns on their own for free. Designed with multi-lingual, multi-media features to be easily accessible to low-income, low-literacy and ESOL users, I-CAN! supports the majority of taxpayers who are EITC-eligible and not currently being reached.
The College of Public and Community Service will serve as the project coordinator to be joined by partners representing a cross-section of public and private entities as well as non-profit, community based organizations. Partners include Survivors, Inc., a 16-year-old low-income women’s organizing and advocacy project that will provide outreach and publicity about EITC. The model used by the Boston EITC Coalition campaign in tax year 2002/2003 demonstrates that if you can provide additional financial services to EITC eligible taxpayers, you can help to integrate them into the financial mainstream and provide community-wide economic empowerment. The project will also establish partnerships with local banks to integrate and formalize a financial literacy component.
Working with the Commonwealth Broadband Collaborative (CBC), an innovative cable and web broadcast system, and CBC partners in Cambridge, Somerville, Malden, and Lowell the project will expand the outreach efforts to launch a statewide EITC Electronic Filing and Technology Access Project.
