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The Hub: Income tax preparation chains target low-income filers, study suggests

  • April 14, 2016
  • The Progressive Policy Institute

A PPI Report by senior fellow Paul Weinstein is discussed in this article for Johns Hopkins University’s magazine.

National tax preparation chains continue to exploit the working poor, many of whom spend a significant portion of a key federal anti-poverty tax credit just to pay for filing their taxes, a new study concludes.

These large tax preparation companies tend to cluster their offices in low-income neighborhoods, according to the study, co-authored by Paul Weinstein, director of Johns Hopkins University’s Graduate Program in Public Management. ZIP codes with the highest level of taxpayers eligible for the Earned Income Tax Credit have about 75 percent more tax preparers per filer than neighborhoods with a more modest share of people eligible for the credit, researchers found.”

Read the rest of the piece at The Hub.

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