Supporting Rural Workers: Best Practices for Increasing Uptake of the Federal Earned Income Tax Credit among Rural Populations in North Carolina

In North Carolina, four out of five eligible tax filers receive the federal Earned Income Tax Credit (EITC), a refundable tax credit for low-income workers. This means that roughly one million taxpayers are putting those critical funds, up to a maximum of over $6,900, back into their pockets. It also means that some eligible taxpayers are still missing out. Research on barriers to claiming the tax credit tends to focus on urban communities, with little attention to what keeps rural filers from claiming the credit.

Supporting Rural Workers: Best Practices for Increasing Uptake of the Federal Earned Income Tax Credit among Rural Populations in North Carolina presents a series of recommendations for increasing participation in the EITC program These recommendations are informed by existing literature and the results of a research project on the barriers that rural workers face to claiming the tax credit in North Carolina. It is one of three reports produced by this project, which was generously funded by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. The project was carried out by a research partnership between MDC Rural Forward, the Jordan Institute at the UNC School of Social Work, the ncIMPACT Initiative at the UNC School of Government, and Together Transforming Lives Inc.