TAP A04-074

EITC Rural Outreach

Statement of Issue:

Stakeholder Partnerships, Education and Communication (SPEC) has no strategy for EITC rural outreach that is nationwide.

Proposal:

The Committee recommended that the EITC program work with SPEC to implement the following six recommendations to achieve the EITC program goals of encouraging eligible taxpayers to claim the EITC and ensure that taxpayers and their advisers understand the eligibility requirements:

1. Adopt a centralized national strategy.
2. Expand the number and nature of the groups contacted in local rural outreach efforts.
3. Arrange for sharing EITC rural outreach best practices among SPEC offices.
4. Establish operating guidelines, including national and local priorities.
5. Establish processes for measuring the effectiveness of outreach efforts.
6. Establish a consistent definition of “rural.”

The Director of Strategic Planning announced at the 2004 TAP Annual Meeting that SPEC was reviewing its EITC rural outreach strategy in response to the Committee’s proposal, and the EITC Director reported that the proposal was forwarded to the appropriate staff for consideration.

SPEC formulated and implemented a Rural Strategy during FY 05. The FY 05 SPEC Rural Strategy utilizes rural pilots and models to demonstrate SPEC’s ability to deliver outreach, free tax return preparation (VITA) and financial literacy training to selected areas of low income rural America. The strategy utilizes identification of, collaboration with and building alliances with groups that have extensive pre-existing rural infrastructures as a means of SPEC reaching the most rural population.

There are 15 pilot sites in 11 states targeting specific populations with high poverty levels. The sites participate in five (5) key activities:

Activity 1 - Identify and Increase SPEC’s inventory of rural partners that have capacity to be self-sufficient rural partners.

Activity 2 - Conduct direct and indirect outreach in low-income rural communities via rural groups with established rural locations.

Activity 3 - Collaborate with rural partners that will participate in self-sufficient rural VITA/Coalition sites.

Activity 4 - Partner with rural organizations that place special emphasis on financial literacy programs.

Activity 5 – Develop three (3) information sharing and Collaboration Memorandums of Understanding (MOU) with major government agencies that provide grants to community based organizations.

In addition, the FY 05 Rural Strategy contains initiatives for outreach to individuals and businesses. A key component of the FY 05 Rural Strategy is a meeting of partners and SPEC Territory Managers to obtain feedback and best practices to better inform implementation of FY 06 Rural Strategy activities.

The FY 05 SPEC Rural Strategy contains extensive measures including:

• Increased EITC Outreach
• Increased number of returns prepared
• Comparison of the change in the number of returns filed claiming EITC with the estimated unclaimed amount of EITC
• Percentage increase in the number of volunteers
• Increase/decrease in the percentage of volunteer prepared returns where another taxpayer has used the dependent to claim EITC, an e-file rejects, or there are EITC math errors
• Overall customer satisfaction with services provided at volunteer sites (not segmented by urban, rural, etc.).
• Overall partner satisfaction with SPEC products and services provided (not segmented by urban, rural, etc).
• Number of people receiving financial literacy training
• Number of people opening IDA accounts