Earned Income Tax Credit Eligibility and Participation

Abstract

The Earned Income Tax Credit (EIC), which is expected to provide over $30 billion in refundable credits in fiscal year 2002, is major federal effort to assist the working poor. The EIC is intended to offset the burden of the Social Security payroll tax on low-income workers and to encourage low-income individuals to work. The amounts of credit that taxpayers receive depend on the taxpayers' incomes and the number of qualifying children they have. Taxpayers must file a tax return in order to claim the credit. Prior evidence suggests that many eligible households have not received the credit. You asked us to provide estimates of (1) the number of eligible households and the number of those who did and did not participate in the EIC program and (2) the amounts of credit foregone by nonparticipating households. You also asked that we provide these estimates disaggregated by the number of qualifying children in the households claiming the credit.

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Document Details

Document Type
Technical Report
Publication Date
Dec 14, 2001
Accession Number
ADA397974

Entities

People

  • James R. White

Organizations

  • United States Government Accountability Office

Tags

DTIC Thesaurus Topics

  • Accuracy
  • Consistency
  • Data Analysis
  • Data Science
  • Databases
  • Families (Human)
  • House Of Representatives
  • Information Science
  • Intervals
  • Sampling
  • Social Security
  • Statistical Samples
  • Surveys
  • Test And Evaluation
  • United States

Fields of Study

  • Business
  • Economics

Readers

  • Government Contracting/Procurement.
  • Naval Personnel Management