New Reports on the Earned Income Credit

Posted by on May 6, 2005

The Brookings Metropolitan Policy Program just published two new reports on the Earned Income Credit. The first examines the impact of the credit in immigrant neighborhoods, and finds that those areas with somewhat less-dense concentrations of immigrants may exhibit lower participation in the EITC. Those of you who run outreach and free tax prep campaigns may want to consider how best to reach eligible immigrant families who live outside traditional immigrant communities.

The second report analyzes recent trends in refund anticipation loan usage among EITC recipients. The good news is that they are on a downward trend overall, and that the scale of free tax prep at the local level appears to have contributed to the decline. The bad news is that in a lot of cities–especially in the South–at least half of all EITC recipients continue to receive their refunds through one of the loans.

Both of the reports are on our homepage (http://www.brookings.edu/metro) and our EITC research page (http://www.brookings.edu/metro/eitc).