Nudging Take-up of the Earned Income Tax Credit in California

The federal Earned Income Tax Credit (EITC) is the largest means-tested cash transfer program in the US, distributing more than $60 billion to low-income households annually. Nevertheless, an estimated one-fifth of households eligible for the EITC do not claim it. Drawing on previous evidence suggesting that low-cost behavioral interventions can address some of the administrative burdens that limit take-up, we ran six pre-registered field experiments testing the effect of outreach aimed at increasing claiming of the California and federal EITC. These studies were conducted in collaboration with the California tax and social service agencies and with a large NGO that conducts statewide outreach, and collectively involved more than one million subjects. We varied the content, design, messenger, and mode of messages within and across these studies. We find no evidence that any of our nudges affected households’ likelihood of filing a tax return or claiming the credit. While our messages spurred high levels of engagement with the outreach material, we conclude that even the most behaviorally informed outreach efforts cannot overcome the barriers to EITC claiming faced by low-income households who do not file returns.