The Montgomery CommunityAction Agency because i wanted to advocate for people who were in my position and speak to the issues that we will affect them and knowing firsthand on the planning side and knowing how much of a benefit this would be to people and being able to contribute to the services provided. I promise i will get to the rest of the panel. You have experience. Tell about that. I went to a private tax preparer that i found in the yellow pages. I feel like i was taken advantage of. I was not sure about what deductions i should have, whether i should itemize or take the blanket deduction and not be aware of what your options are, your rights are. I am in need of money and will do whatever i can. I i did not get what i was supposed to get on my return luckily we have the trusted sites that are available so that people are not taken advantage of. Thank you. Doctor kathryn edin, the experience of laurieanne sayles and her experience with the eitc is this consistent with your experience . People love the symbolic act of filing their taxes with other taxpayers whether it is at a website or not. But it is meaningful. The temptation to get whatever it is called now. We cannot do a rapid refund, but h r block has found a way around that. It is real the thing that i really heard laurieanne sayles say was, the relief of parental stress the ways in which the eitc can help your child feel like an ordinary american kid are very consistent, and it is not like the ballet lessons is an extravagant parental expenditure but the symbolism of those expenditures is powerful both powerful, both for a parent and child. What we want is for all people to feel a part of america and participate. What we heard in the field was, this program and the way we administer this program has those benefits. Along those lines i could be wrong about this but wasnt theyre research about eitc beneficiaries or participants, i should say say, be more likely to vote, for example. Did i read that . When you deliver benefits to people in a way that respects theyre dignity and treats them as citizens they are more likely to vote. There theyre are all kinds of spillover effects above and beyond the Health Effects that have been documented, documented, for example. Researchers ought to get out their and vote for citizen benefits. Thank you. And chyeching huang, their have been research into the longterm benefits particularly as they relate to children. Research just keeps coming. It is showing that the eitc definitely the case for children and families. For example, these links between increased eitc and improved paternal and infant health. And then on to schooling their is research that shows that high eitc links to better performance. And now their is research that shows that their is a boost in college enrollment. That is because of the program. It makes it more affordable. One step further starting to see starting to see Research Children who grow up with increased benefits through eitc are more likely to work more and learn more. All the way through we see impacts. Going back these impacts cant happen if people dont claim the credit they are owed. And that is exactly where i was going, but that research is pretty astounding. Barbara i want to bring you in here. Can you tell me kind of look at the supply and demand and to the extent you are comfortable. I have to warn you all i am not rational about the importance of what it is that we do. My husband warned me not to get too emotional but theyre are numbers, data research, and then their are people. For 25 years i have been helping these people. Of. The research and data reflects what i have been seeing for 25 years. There is not enough of supply of people. The number the number of people that the combined Committee Tax aid, various counties and jurisdictions have there own counties that they have run. Aarp has theyre own program, program, but you put those programs together and you dont have enough people to be able to do a return for every person who is entitled to claim credit which means you have people going to preparers who charge them too much money, or worse;; the upside of Electronic Filing and turbotax and programs like that is it can make it easier and faster and so forth. Forth. The downside is that anyone with enough money to buy a copy of turbotax can go out and say hey say hey, i can do your tax return for you. People who dont know anything and people who will deliberately create fraudulent returns that the taxpayer he or herself does not even know about. A volunteer with our program this year has been in the irs Enforcement Division prosecuting criminal fraud and one of the significant things he is doing is prosecuting cases against preparers who basically prepare parallel returns. So as far as the taxpayer knows they are filing the return and getting the refund they are due and then their is a return file that is fake with a much bigger refund. And that goes goes into the preparers account. As far as the client goes as far as the client knows they are doing the right thing. Again, as the senator mentioned, there is not a lot of funding and so forth. The demand is huge. The supply is narrow. Congress needs to take a better look at how to both find the preparation effort and also i will throw in here quickly and then stopped talking, that the irs tried to create rules to regulate preparers who can do it require them to go through training, get a certification which of course, was knocked down. Full disclosure i also worked worked at the irs for four years. Since the irs has been told they dont have the power to regulate preparers congress has to do it. My clients come in after being taken advantage of by these people and zero refunds that they were not entitled to but did not no they were not entitled to and keep paying off that debt. Again, i am not rational about it but their does need to be some degree of regulation so that you can go to the committee and say to these people do not have your return done unless someone can show you they have the certification. I would love to pick up on that. Please do. [applause] part of the conversation we had earlier. The data does back up your feeling. Vita the highest accuracy which is partially because vita volunteers have to go through certification. In contrast unenrolled preparers who dont have to go through certification have the highest error rates this regulation is important if i am hearing correctly it does not sound like right now their is a lot of political will in terms of expanding the supply and number of vita sites. The funding for low income tax at best it is stagnant. My organization applies for grants every year in order to Fund Operations and their is just not enough to fund the sites. You can find a legal clinic that can help taxpayers once they have gotten into trouble but if you find the people who are doing the returns, then they are right in the number of times a taxpayer gets into trouble we will be less. But the funding i dont have the numbers. At best it is stagnant and has not kept up with demand. Thank you. And you. And i want to stay with the politics for a while. Senator brown mentioned eitc expended under bipartisan president s, both parties sort of a feelgood story. I think we have a little bit of a potential a potential storm on the horizon. Chyeching huang, if you can tell us about the fdic expansion set to expire in 2016 and why we need to Pay Attention to that. Unless policymakers act at the end of 2173 key provisions of the eitc will expire which means millions of families will face a loss of some or all of there credit and push more than 16 million people, working families into poverty. This is a big deal. Again, going back to the story what that means if you think about a single mother with two children working fulltime at minimum wage earning 14,500 she would face a loss of her entire child credit losing 1,000 725. That that is an important amount to people who are struggling to get by. Making those critical provisions permanent a critical priority for this congress. News in the house that their is an effort to make some expiring tax breaks permanent, including tax breaks for corporations. Without getting into the merits of those they think that if anything gets made permanent these credits for working families must go with them. Does anyone have anything to add to that . That number, 14,500, they must 500 they must think how can anyone live on that. Meticulous analysis of family budgets, you we will not be surprised to here that they cannot. In this country we think if you work and play by the rules you ought to be able to live. No one is living high off the hard on the eitc. They are barely scraping by. Responsible economic behavior but all of us would applaud the fact that almost 1 in five is put away and saved which is quite amazing it is easy to lose sight of how tough family economic situations are and how unstable the labor market is. And the value in building a personal safety net is critical. People ought to be rewarded for playing by the rules and this is how we we will make that happen in america. Thank you. You. Senator brown alluded to an effort to expand eitc. Teeeleven, i wonder if you could tell us a little bit more about why that is critical. At the moment childless adults and noncustodial parents. Under age 25 completely ineligible. Those who are eligible for a small amount. They would get a eitc of 25. In part because of eitc childless workers, low income childless workers tax the group deeper into poverty. Making more eligible eligible for eitc and boosting it so that it is an amount that is salient holds strong promise of increasing employment so i think that is an important policy priority. The question about congressional interest this has bipartisan interest. That is great. Anyone else have anything to say . In terms of my clients it is hard for me to explain to my clients why they do not get anything. You dont want to encourage them to go have children but it is hard because they are working hard and even if they get the maximum credit it is less than 500 and that is on an income of five or 6,000. It is small. You can say from a policy perspective you can say you want to make sure people who have Young Children need more support, but that does not mean if youre childless and working hard that you yourself dont need support. I have to say when i was right right out of law school making a small amount of money and filling out my tax return and saw this and income thing and thought that is true and then said you need to have a child and i thought i could not get it. It. I guess it is an unappreciated population. The rub is the hardest for noncustodial parents, many of whom we need desperately to bring into the labor market. Imagine market. Imagine if we could see the gain in noncustodial parents like we have for single mothers it would change the lives of millions of americans. And then noncustodial parents who are working and paying Child Support and they feel the unfairness of the fact they are not eligible for the tax credit quite keenly. And laurieanne sayles, i wanted to ask you, too in regard with your work to Community Action in montgomery if you are seeing with regard to the childless workers, noncustodial parents, if you are seeing some of theyre struggles. We definitely are. One of our initiatives we were at the forefront of last year was asking for the earned income tax credit. We do see a disparity with people who do not have children. We in montgomery county, they match your earned income tax credit at the county level. It was increased to 60 percent, but now it is back. So montgomery county, one of the wealthiest counties they understand the extra benefit to help a family. And that is a whole other issue, the county level. We have plenty of time for audience questions. In a recent interview you did with tax credits for working families there was a great quote. You said, and getting and getting to no the Families Research interviews it we will help you think more intelligently about policy whether you are conservative or liberal. Can you talk about that . Like many at this table when we conducted this research all of the people trained as tax preparers. Can preparers. Can i say that test is hard . [laughter] as it should be. It took me quite a long time to pass it. We manned to vita sites in boston, 11 in dorchester and one in east boston if you want to know you know, how poor people think, what theyre lives are like their like, there is no better way than to follow the money. It is a poignant time i think, sitting across the desk from a family or individual filing taxes. It is an intimate moment where you Learn Private things and it is a chance for you to build on that feeling that people so value that they are citizens and taxpayers. You can give a lot in that interaction but you we will come away with an understanding which we will transform you and help you you no. When you act you have the voices of real people in the back of your mind which of course, is always better than acting without that. Thank you. If i can say one more thing about the Actual Experience of working with a client. They have to tell you very personal things because you need to know about theyre children and where they live and what they are doing and if they have lost there job. So you so you have to deal with them on a personal level. I had a client years ago and if i start crying, dont be upset. Upset. This woman had been through a horrendous situation, been evicted from her apartment. In a homeless shelter with her children. Her sister turk and the children but would not take her. Anyway she got a job at cvs working at one hour photo. This is a job that some of us might not value. It was the most wonderful thing in this womans life. She came in and said how blessed she was to have this job and it was great. And the people she worked with were fabulous. I did the return. The Previous Year whoever did her return did not figure out about that credit i i tell her she is going to get this refund like three something thousand dollars. She threw her arms around her and said, you are giving me my children back. Okay. And you go oh my god. She was going was going to have money where she could put down the Security Deposit on that apartment. It was not that she could not pay the rent, but she did not have the money to get a place to live with her children. When someone when someone says to you, you are giving me my children back you carry that with you forever. It is that profound an impact that this tax credit can make. You make. You know it is not puppies and babies. It is profound. I forgot a question i wanted to ask earlier on really actually for you, professor brown. It is much professor kathryn edin, this is much more than an income program. As i said 40 40 percent of the refund is typically spend toward mobility purposes. 70 percent of the total is set aside for savings and much of the rest goes to Human Capitol Development and durable goods. Their are measurable improvements in peoples lives that are laborsaving. A standalone refrigerator you can shop more efficiently and buy in bulk. It makes the daytoday schedule more doable if you are able to buy and maintain a used vehicle. Measurable improvements in peoples lives. Maybe what is the most meaningful is the sense that you can get ahead you can be Something Different from what you are now that you can enter the middle class. People not only plant all year for how to spend theyre eitc making detailed calculations. They have multiyear plans for how they we will save save, clean up there credit, make a down payment on a home, moved to a quieter place with safer streets and better schools. These narratives drive them all year long and keep them going. This is not just an income support but really not only a Wealth Creation device but a whole different idea of what life can be like in the future. Thank you. Before i i turned to the audience, this is a freebie. All right. Audience. We think about school. We think of tax time as. [inaudible] how does this moment move beyond just a refund and help with the aspirations for the future . One of the reasons it is so exciting more deeply part of this movement, so many of the vita volunteers have become adamant asset building advocates and want to link other services to what is happening because they see the potential. I love the ideas about thinking about the other services and products partnerships that we can use. One of the things we started doing it when you come in not just a list of your personal information information, but also it links to social services. Providing an atmosphere you weed out what people want at that time. It ties to a lot. We partner with various organizations for credit counseling. They go meet with a credit counselor. So being able to five the credit counseling worked well. A couple of them are hear today. Linking the opportunities and critics. Taking the opportunity to devote develop your income to savings and income. In the packet you have a flyer. A lot about the tax moment. Dignity and that is really incumbent upon the vita sites to treat clients with as much dignity as possible. You have heavy competition from h r block and the deliverers of taxes because they no how to treat people and make them feel valuable. Part of the reason people go to h r block rather than at vita site is because it feels good to be their. From how the office looks to how they are treated, we need to make sure it is profoundly attached to how they are treated. Second, people want to clean up there credit so that they can move ahead. People dont no how to. We cover this in detail in the book. So credit counseling and help with understanding how they should prioritize debt and what counts toward credit score would be valuable. Okay. [inaudible question] to what degree to the vita sites allow people to register to vote . We dont have that with our sites, but it is a fabulous idea. [laughter] one of our sites is dedicated to providing opportunities to register voters, open accounts. It is definitely a priority to link that service. It is hard for me to see the whole room. Can someone help me if i am not seeing people in the back. Yes. Thanks. My question is for professor kathryn edin. How we can help low income taxpayers become more aware of tax preparation either in person, like at the vita site or online . It is hard to compete with those dancing tax men and women on the corner. It is interesting, there has been a longterm and vigorous campaign. The abcd Community Organization which has offices and