Benefits Program: CTC: Child Tax Credit
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Technology, Accessibility, and the Child Tax Credit
Code for America's GetCTC portal simplifies access to the Child Tax Credit for low-income families by providing a mobile-friendly, bilingual platform for streamlined tax filing.
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The Effects of the 2021 Child Tax Credit on Housing Affordability and the Living Arrangements of Families With Low Incomes
This study examines how the 2021 expansion of the Child Tax Credit (CTC) influenced housing affordability and living arrangements for low-income families.
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Balancing at the Edge of the Cliff: Experiences and Calculations of Benefit Cliffs, Plateaus, and Trade-Offs
This Urban Institute report explores the impact of benefit cliffs, plateaus, and trade-offs on families receiving public assistance, examining how changes in earnings affect access to essential benefits like SNAP, Medicaid, and housing subsidies.
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Texting Playbook: Recommendations and Tips for Texting Clients of Safety Net Services
The Texting Playbook provides guidance and well-researched strategies to help state agencies implement texting in support of Medicaid, SNAP, WIC, and other benefits programs. It provides an overview of how to start texting clients; the types of messages to send, including real examples; Federal Communications Commision (FCC) policy guidance; how to encourage opt-ins and collect consent; how to avoid coming across as spam; and a cost analysis of texting.
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Building a Stronger Foundation for American Families: Options for Child Tax Credit Reform
Our existing maze of family tax benefits — including the CTC, Earned Income Tax Credit (EITC), Child and Dependent Care Tax Credit (CDCTC), and head of household (HoH) filing status — has several structural deficiencies that make overhauling the system a prerequisite for any effort to boost support for families with children. The report offers several options for expanding and streamlining family tax benefits to address these issues.
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Project Snapshot: Policy Rules Database
The Policy Rules Database (PRD), developed by the Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta and the National Center for Children in Poverty, consolidates complex rules for major U.S. federal and state benefit programs and tax policies into a standardized, easy-to-use format. This database allows researchers to model public assistance impacts, simulate policy changes, and analyze benefits cliffs across various household scenarios using common rules and language across different programming platforms.
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The IRS as a Benefits Administrator
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.
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Claim Your Child Tax Credit
Code for America’s simplified tax filing tool that allows users to claim their Child Tax Credit and any missing amount of their third stimulus payment.
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Growing Up NYC
Growing Up NYCÂ is mobile-friendly website that makes it simple for families to learn about and access city programs, as well as services and activities available to New York residents.
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Code The Dream at Policy2Code Demo Day at BenCon 2024
The team introduced an AI assistant for benefits navigators to streamline the process and improve outcomes by quickly assessing client eligibility for benefits programs.
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NYC Benefits Platform: Eligibility Screening API
The NYC Benefits Screening API provides machine-readable calculations and criteria for benefits screening that power the ACCESS NYC screening questionnaire.
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Project Snapshot: Benefits Launch
Benefits Data Trust (BDT) is a nonprofit that connects people to public benefits through a streamlined, phone-based application system called Benefits Launch, which reduces redundant questions and speeds up the process for multiple programs. BDT's approach, supported by a custom-built rules engine, has facilitated over 800,000 benefit enrollments, helping secure over $9 billion for eligible households across seven states.