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It’s CalEITC Awareness Week! The federal Earned Income Tax Credit (EITC) is the largest anti-poverty cash assistance program in the country, and California has a state-level EITC (known as CalEITC) as well. These two EITCs are some of the most effective ways we can help lift working families and their children out of poverty.
For a low-income working household, the state and federal EITCs can provide real money (up to $6000 or more, depending on the household's situation).
To get the EITCs, and other helpful benefits like child tax credits, people need to file their income taxes. Some people may worry that it's too complicated to do their taxes, or too expensive to have an in-person expert or an electronic filing program walk them through the process. But with VITA income tax services, folks can self-file online or get in-person help, and United Way covers the cost! (The income limits to qualify are higher than you may think: up to $73,000 for online filing and up to $58,000 for in-person help.)
One way we are bringing awareness to the EITCs and VITA is with a banner campaign on our OCTOPUS portal. Click the image above to enlarge! Every month, thousands of DSS clients submit documents using our OCTOPUS portal (and its Spanish-language sibling, PULPO), so it's ideal for a campaign like this. The banners automatically re-format to fit any size window or device, and people can click links in the banners to go directly to the promoted services.
To help you inform your clients about these services, you can:
- Send them to CalEITC4me.org and myfreetaxes.org
- Share these printable flyers (2-sided, color, bilingual, PDF) on EITC and free filing and VITA in-person tax help.