To inform future efforts to bring more low-income tax filers into the tax system, this report focuses on the Volunteer Income Tax Assistance (VITA) program and investigates the challenges and opportunities to better serve the American people and improve the experience of tax filing.
This report explores Michigan’s implementation of the Pandemic Electronic Benefit Transfer (P-EBT) program. Drawing on interviews from individuals within the Michigan Department of Health and Human Services and input from SNAP participants via surveys distributed using the Fresh EBT app, this report provides insights into the strategies that enabled Michigan to roll out an entirely new program quickly and effectively.
New America’s New Practice Lab discusses insights into racial inequities within the Unemployment Insurance System, and provides recommendations its framework for rectifying inequality in policies and programs moving forward.
The purpose of this document is to outline possible technical approaches to supporting a cash assistance program. The report aims to both capture individual approaches as well as overarching insights taken from across the approaches taken by different organizations.
The IRS is arguably the single most critical benefits administrator in the country, given its responsibility for tax credit-based relief programs, and COVID-19 relief payments. Despite these programs’ incredible progress in reducing poverty, and despite great strides by the IRS to implement them successfully, accessing IRS benefits remains too difficult for many low-income families. This report presents a comprehensive agenda to increase benefit coverage rates, simplify Americans’ interactions with the IRS, and decrease the portion of IRS benefits diverted to third parties.
The New Practice Lab interviewed Black and Latinx workers that lost their job or income due to COVID-19 and their experience navigating UI. They synthesized their findings in this report, discussing how compounding inequities that exist in the unemployment insurance system make it less accessible for workers of color.
