In Case You Missed It: Today, during a Senate Finance Committee hearing titled “SpotlightingIRS Customer Service Challenges,” U.S. Senator Sherrod Brown (D-OH) pressedErin M. Collins, National Taxpayer Advocate at the Internal Revenue Service(IRS) on ways IRS can better assist Ohio families with the Child Tax Credit(CTC). Brown has been at the forefront of the fight to expand the CTC, aprogram that 92 percent of Ohio’s kids benefitted from.
“92 percent of the kids in my state benefit from this [Child TaxCredit] expansion. In almost every case, three thousand dollars in a tax cut,” said Brown.“Parents, I hear over and over, are less stressed about affording the rent, orgroceries, or new school clothes because of that.”
Brownasked Ms. Collins ways the IRS can make it easier forOhio families to get the full CTC when filing this year’s income tax returns.
“I think the challengefor the IRS is really reaching those underserved communities, and educating thetaxpayers as to what benefits are out there. For a more financially comfortableindividual, larger corporations they have access to accountants, CPAs, andother professionals,” said Collins. “But, it is usually the lower income folksthat do not. So, programs such as VITA [Volunteer Income Tax Assistance] andTCE [Tax Counseling for the Elderly] are very important and the outreach theIRS does with all of its partners that it works with is hugely important togetting that message out there.”
In January, Brown joined a bipartisan,bicameral group of colleagues in calling on the U.S. Department of the Treasuryand the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) to provide penalty relief fortaxpayers amid extensive, ongoing processing backlogs at the IRS.
InMay 2021, Brown secured a commitment from IRSCommissioner Charles Rettig that the IRS would be ready to start issuingmonthly child tax credit payments in July 2021.
InJune of 2019, Brown’s Volunteer Income Tax Assistance (VITA)Permanence Act was included in the larger Taxpayer First Act to modernize the IRS,improve taxpayer services, and strengthen taxpayer protections that was signedinto law. Brown’s VITA bill made permanent an IRS-administered matching grantprogram for volunteer tax preparation sites nationwide, including eight current VITA recipients sites in Ohio.
Brown first introduced his VITAPermanence Act in 2017. The VITA program offers free tax help topeople who generally make $54,000 or less, persons with disabilities, theelderly, and limited English speakers by helping prepare and file their incometax returns. During the 2019 tax filing season, VITA programs nationwide filedmore than 1.5 million federal income tax returns, including more than 419,000returns for the EITC. This helped Americans claim approximately $1.8 billionthey’d earned over the tax year.
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