Reaching Families to Get The Tax Credits They’re Owed

Impact

• In 2021 and 2022, thanks to the expanded Child Tax Credit and COVID-era Economic Impact Payments, a family of four with zero or near-zero income could get nearly $20,000 in tax benefits—but many of these families weren’t filing returns, even after we launched the simplified filing product GetCTC.
• Our outreach campaign with public benefits agencies prompted over 30,000 of these families to file returns using GetCTC and claim an estimated $40 million total.

The challenge

Every year, millions of families with low income miss out on critical tax benefits because they don’t file a tax return. In 2021, this problem swelled to unprecedented proportions. During the COVID pandemic, Congress passed vast new tax benefits that were worth well over $10,000 per family. These benefits were available even to millions of families with zero or near-zero income, many of whom never been required to file a tax return or been eligible for tax benefits and thus had never filed a return before. Chief among these benefits was the expanded Child Tax Credit, which was available in 2021 and 2022.

To make it easier for these families to access the credits, the IRS authorized what was called a simplified filing process, which allowed zero-income and very-low-income families to claim the credits without providing the full details of a traditional tax return. In response, we built GetCTC, a simplified tax filing tool designed to make it easy for this population to claim key credits through a mobile-friendly online form. GetCTC was indeed much easier to complete than filing a full tax return. But there was still a big problem: how would we get this product into the hands of the people who needed it?

Our approach

When we first launched GetCTC in September 2021, we tried everything to get families to use the product, and kept careful track of what was and wasn’t working. We ran dozens of trainings to help all manner of state and local governments and non-profit organizations serve as CTC navigators; we worked with state and federal agencies to send direct outreach messages to their beneficiaries; we worked with school districts to do outreach to parents. What we noticed in fall 2021 was that messages from public benefits agencies were reliably powerful in driving returns. A single text message to SNAP beneficiaries in a medium-sized state could get over 1,000 families to claim millions of dollars in benefits.

So, when we re-launched GetCTC in May 2022, we doubled down on our efforts to promote the product via state public benefits agencies, launching a comprehensive campaign to support agencies in sending GetCTC outreach. We put together a partnership guide that contained messaging best practices for agencies doing outreach, including, for example, sample messages to send program participants and FAQs about simplified filing. Even more critically, we had full-time staff reach out to and work directly with the agencies, addressing their concerns, and making it easier for them to launch their outreach campaigns. We then helped agencies track their efforts with unique tracking URLs, giving them real-time feedback on how their outreach was going.

As the outreach campaign scaled across the country, we tracked the outreach conducted state by state.

Track which states are conducting tax benefits outreach

We also continued to iterate and learn, running nearly a dozen randomized controlled trials on messaging and service levels during the 2022 season.

Outcomes

Ultimately, over 30 states did direct outreach and promotion—text messages, emails, mail, web banners, and push notifications—promoting GetCTC. These efforts prompted over 30,000 households to submit returns through GetCTC, claiming an estimated $42 million in tax benefits. The campaign proved that when outreach is done right, it can make an enormous difference in helping families claim what they’re owed through the tax system.

We also kept careful track of these outreach efforts throughout 2022. In early 2023, we published a detailed analysis of GetCTC outreach efforts, including the campaigns run by public benefits agencies. We identified practices that raised or lowered conversion rates, estimated the impact agencies can see from different activities, investigated questions like how many rounds of outreach are optimal for agencies, and analyzed the contexts in which this type of outreach might be valuable in the future.

Years later, the strategy we pursued in 2022 continues to inform how we work to help get essential tax benefits to families who need them most. Through collaboration with government agencies people already know and trust, Code for America’s tax benefits team is able to facilitate direct outreach to households and advance our mission of making tax filing simple, free, and accessible for all.

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