Tax-Time Saving and the Earned Income Tax Credit: Results from Online Field and Survey Experiments

Author

Mathieu Despard, Washington University in St. Louis
Michal Grinstein-Weiss, Washington University in St. Louis
Stephen Roll, Washington University in St. Louis
Bradley Hardy, American University
Dana Perantie, Washington University in St Louis
Jane Oliphant, Ascend STL

Publication Date

6-9-2020

Publisher

Social Policy Institute at Washington University in St. Louis

Summary

Tax refunds are an opportunity for Earned Income Tax Credit (EITC) recipients to build emergency savings. Randomly assigned behavioral interventions in 2015 and 2016 have statistically significant impacts on refund saving take-up and amounts among EITC recipients who filed their taxes online. From a survey experiment, we also find that EITC recipients have a 49 percent and 59 percent increased likelihood of deferring 20 percent of their refunds for six months when hypothetically offered 25 and 50 percent savings matches (p < .001), respectively. These findings can inform policy development related to encouraging emergency saving at tax time.

Document Type

Working Paper

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.7936/rjqe-g266

Project

Refund to Savings (R2S)

Recommended Citation

Despard, Mathieu; Grinstein-Weiss, Michal; Roll, Stephen; Hardy, Bradley; Perantie, Dana; and Oliphant, Jane, "Tax-Time Saving and the Earned Income Tax Credit: Results from Online Field and Survey Experiments" (2020). Social Policy Institute Research. 26.
https://openscholarship.wustl.edu/spi_research/26