Canada’s poor urged to earn more by filing their taxes, By Kyle Bakx, October 11, 2016, CBC News: “After not filing her income taxes for three years, Janet Smith is struggling to find all the paperwork she needs to send to Revenue Canada. As someone with a low income, she’s expecting to receive government benefits once her taxes are filed. ‘That could probably help me make ends meet. Right now, being on disability and just scraping by, sometimes not even scraping by, it’s pretty tough,’ she said. ‘It’s been a while since I filed taxes, there’s a lot of new things that have come out since I last filed. A lot of benefits that I’m sure I qualify for that I’m missing out on.’ Filing taxes is becoming the key strategy for organizations looking to lift people out of poverty…”
Tag: Taxes
State Grocery Taxes
Decried as unfair, taxes on groceries persist in some states, By Elaine S. Povich, August 16, 2016, Stateline: “Thirteen states and many localities continue to tax the sale of groceries, even though the taxes disproportionately hurt the poor and may affect the quality, variety and even the amount of food they can afford to put on the table. The reason: The taxes provide a steady source of revenue in volatile times, making it difficult for states to get rid of them without finding a way to make up the revenue. Recent efforts in several of the states to eliminate or lower the taxes have failed…”
Low-Income Families and Taxes
- For nontraditional families, the tax code can be especially confusing, By Yuki Noguchi, April 7, 2016, National Public Radio: “The TV and a cellphone are playing videos, as Trevor Franklin tries to quiet a brood of kids in the living room of the apartment he shares with his fiancée in southeast Washington, D.C. ‘TJ is mine, and Malik and Morgan are my stepkids,’ Franklin says. A 14-year-old stepdaughter is on her way home from school, and his pregnant fiancée is on bed rest with a fifth child. The Census Bureau says about 41 percent of children are born to mothers who aren’t married, about five times the rate in the 1940s. But they aren’t all single parents. A growing percentage of babies born out of wedlock have parents who live together…”
- Philadelphia wants low-income residents to take tax credit, By Katie Colaneri, March 30, 2016, Marketplace: “Even before Tax Day, Philadelphia resident Roslyn Sanders is ahead of the game. She’s at her local community development corporation getting her taxes done and it’s the second time she’s come here. Sanders is back because last year, the organization helped her and her husband, Donald get a big refund by figuring out they qualified for the Earned Income Tax Credit, or EITC. She said they got a check in the mail for more than $3,000…”
- Editorial: Tax code should work for all low-income Americans, Editorial, April 5, 2016, Des Moines Register: “Conservatives have never met a tax cut they didn’t like. Liberals have never met a government handout they didn’t support. So Republicans and Democrats in U.S. Congress should be able to unite behind President Barack Obama’s proposal to expand the Earned Income Tax Credit. The EITC, created in 1975, is intended to provide additional dollars to low-income Americans and promote employment. To qualify, people must meet income and other requirements, as well as file a tax return. The credit increases as an individual’s income increases, thereby encouraging people to enter the workforce or work more. Because it is refundable, it puts money directly into people’s pockets to spend…”