Publications
Author:
Berube, Alan
What's blocking the recovery (Commentary)
Author(s):
Alan Berube , Karen Dynan , Ted Gayer
The Washington Post. The economy's expansion last quarter, for the first time in more than a year, has prompted much speculation that the recession is over. This turning point, however, simply marks an end to the decline in activity.
Published: 11/20/09
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The New Safety Net: How the Tax Code Helped Low-Income Working Families During the Early 2000s (Research Report)
Author(s):
Alan Berube
As fiscal pressures continue to constrain public expenditures on lower-income families, the EITC increasingly constitutes a large part of a new safety net for the low-wage workforce. This report analyzes IRS data on low-income working families who received the EITC between tax years 2000 and 2003, finding that coincident with the economic downturn the number of EITC claims rose 14 percent during that time. Over the same period, the proportion of EITC recipients filing returns through paid preparers rose from 65 to 71 percent despite expansions in the provision of free tax assistance. The report also reveals that these low-income taxpayers benefited from federal education and child care tax credits at low rates, due largely to their non-refundable nature.
Published: 02/15/06
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Tax Policies to Help Working Families in Cities (Discussion Papers/Tax Policy Center)
Author(s):
Alan Berube , William G. Gale , Tracy Kornblatt
This paper examines how existing federal tax rules affect low- and middle-income working families in cities, and finds that several tax policy options could provide better economic opportunities and incentives for these households. Policies that expand and modify the child care and dependent care tax credit, the saver's credit, and subsidies for health insurance, or that alter the structure of homeownership subsidies away from deductions and toward capped credits for homeownership, could improve the welfare of millions of working families in cities, and should receive the attention of both urban leaders and federal policy makers in the future.
Published: 06/13/05
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Step in the Right Direction: Recent Declines in Refund Loan Usage Among Low-Income Taxpayers (Research Report)
Author(s):
Alan Berube , Tracy Kornblatt
Examining trends in the usage of refund anticipation loans (RALs) among taxayers who receive the EITC, this analysis finds that fewer EITC recipients used RALs in tax year 2002 than 2001, but that rates remain very high in cities throughout the southern U.S. The South continues to dominate the RAL market, as more than half of all EITC recipients who purchased a RAL lived in that region. In cities where as many as 60 percent of EITC recipients continue to use refund loans, greater efforts are needed to heighten local awareness of the problem and to monitor the RAL marketplace more closely.
Published: 04/08/05
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Tienes EITC?: A Study of the Earned Income Tax Credit in Immigrant Communities (Research Report)
Author(s):
Alan Berube
The EITC represents a considerable investment in immigrant neighborhoods, totaling $6.7 billion in tax year 1999. This study finds that these communities access the credit at significant rates, but that their low-income taxpayers appear more likely to use commercial tax preparers. To further harness the benefits of the EITC for immigrant families and communities, local leaders in the public and non-profit sectors should boost volunteer tax preparation capacity in high-immigrant neighborhoods, fund research on the economic impacts of the credit and related tax programs in these communities, and target EITC outreach to eligible immigrant families living in suburbs and other locales where the immigrant population is less concentrated.
Published: 04/08/05
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Earned Income Credit Participation--What We (Don't) Know (Policy Briefs)
Author(s):
Alan Berube
Each filing season, Brookings and a number of other research organizations receive queries from people working in the field, wanting to know more about EITC participation in their communities. Unfortunately, researchers face constraints in their ability to provide accurate estimates on many EITC participation-related questions. Briefly, the major obstacles are: some people who claim the EITC aren't technically eligible for it; we can't know how many eligible families there are at a local level; and eligible people who claim the credit differ from eligible people who don't. This note offers a couple of ideas on how people can make use of data to measure and explain the opportunities for local EITC outreach programs. It then explains each of these obstacles in a little more detail.
Published: 02/15/05
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Blue (and Red) Over Tax Cuts (Commentary)
Author(s):
Alan Berube
Do Washington's tax cutters know what they're doing for the folks back home in 'Red' America? In the bizarre realm of tax policy in Washington today, politics takes little notice of demographic reality.
Published: 04/15/04
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The "State" of Low-Wage Workers: How the EITC Benefits Urban and Rural Communities in the 50 States (Research Report)
Author(s):
Alan Berube
This article examines the spatial distribution of EITC earners nationwide in tax year 2001, and characterizes the different locational patterns of the working poor within states, introducing a typology to describe these state-level patterns. It finds that rural areas in the South have the highest proportions of tax filers claiming the EITC, and that 19 states have roughly similar proportions of large-city and rural taxpayers benefiting from the credit. It concludes that supporters of large cities and small rural towns at the federal and state levels share a common interest in advancing a tax policy agenda that benefits the working poor.
Published: 02/22/04
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