With Tax Filing Season Underway, Brown Visits Free Tax Preparation Site to Urge Northeast Ohioans to Claim the Refunds They've Earned

Filing taxes is complicated and can be particularly complicated for families claiming the EITC. At Neighborhood Housing Services (NHS), Brown joined Linda Cobb, a Cleveland-area woman who filed for the EITC with help from NHS volunteers. Brown was also joined by Lou Tisler, Executive Director of NHS, who outlined the services available at Ohio's Volunteer Income Tax Assistance (VITA) sites. Brown is working to expand the EITC for workers without children, like Cobb.

Last month, Brown released a map of Ohio's tax assistance sites -- like NHS -- where taxpayers can access free help filing their taxes. A list of tax assistance sites in the Cleveland area is below. Ohioans can also use the IRS Free File program, which provides access to brand-name tax software to approximately 100 million individuals and families with incomes of $62,000 or less. Seventy percent of the nation's taxpayers are eligible for IRS Free File.

Brown is a cosponsor of the Volunteer Income Tax Assistance (VITA) Act, legislation that would make the matching VITA grant program permanent and direct the IRS to develop a national standard for best practices. In 2015, Brown helped secure an increase in VITA funding as well as additional resources to help expand access for the Tax Counseling for the Elderly (TCE) program.

In December, Brown -- a member of the U.S. Senate Committee on Finance -- helped secure passage of a bill to permanently extend expansions of the EITC and Child Tax Credit (CTC) -- two of the most important anti-poverty credits for working families. Without an extension of the EITC and CTC by 2017, 16.4 million people would have been pushed into poverty or deeper into poverty.

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