Helping families access New York’s expanded Empire State Child Credit
New York State Office of Temporary and Disability Assistance
January 2026 - April 2026
Why This Matters For Families
In 2025, New York State enacted the largest expansion of the Empire State Child Credit in state history, increasing the credit to up to $1,000 for each young child. Approximately 1.6 million households (2.75 million children) can benefit from the credit, and for families with young children, this could mean thousands of additional dollars to help cover everyday costs like child care, food, clothing, rent, and transportation, creating more financial breathing room at a stage when family expenses are especially high.
But making the credit more generous is only part of the equation: families also need to be able to access it. If eligible households do not file, do not know they qualify, or face a complicated claiming process, money intended for them can go unclaimed. Making the credit easy to know about and receive is essential to getting more money into families’ hands.
Implementation Challenge
In New York State, one in six eligible residents miss out on federal tax credits, and even more don’t receive state credits they’re owed. New York state is working to make sure eligible families know about the credit and the significant dollar value, understand what they need to do to claim it, and feel comfortable engaging with the tax filing process.
This was especially important at a time when some immigrant and mixed-status families were more hesitant to interact with government systems or share information. Families needed clear, trusted answers to basic questions: “Do I qualify?” “Is it safe to file?” “What documents do I need?” “Where can I get help?”
Our Approach
The New York State Office of Temporary Disability Assistance wanted to make sure families were receiving this benefit. They had heard about our previous work with states and wanted help with their efforts to reach New York State families. New Practice Lab partnered with New York to strengthen outreach and connect families to trusted information and filing support so that more eligible households could successfully claim the credit.
Our engagement included:
User testing and providing expert feedback on New York State outreach materials, including their outreach website, text messages to New York residents, and letters. We helped the state improve those materials based on barriers families face and previous tax outreach communications that have been effective.
Identifying potential targeted populations for the state to do outreach to - including residents receiving other benefits and families who had filed taxes in the past but missed out on tax credits
Providing expert guidance on ways to evaluate the impact of NYS outreach
OBJECTIVE
Determine priority channels and populations for NYS to get information to about tax credits and connecting families to support
WHAT WE DID
Identified priority outreach channels for New York (website, outreach letters, and text messages)
Identified likely eligible populations to send targeted communications to.
OBJECTIVE
Finalize content for priority communications
WHAT WE DID
User tested priority outreach materials and refined content for priority outreach channels
OBJECTIVE
Measure the results and overall filing results
WHAT WE DID
Advised the state on how they could understand the filing outcomes, connected to their priority outreach channels
What We Learned
New York’s campaign was a valuable first step in raising awareness of their expanded Child Tax Credit and helping New Yorkers get easier access to tax filing support. Multichannel communications are important - as families often value hearing about benefits from multiple parties to verify them. So mass communications (texts, billboards, media, etc) in concert with community based organization messaging/friends and neighbors, is most useful.
More ambitious efforts, such as the New York Department of Taxation and Finance leveraging internal data to identify families missing credits and pre-populating tax returns, could help more families by making the actual process of filing much easier for families. The most effective efforts are those that actively involve multiple departments — including the Governor’s Office, Departments of Finance and Social Service/other benefits agencies - as each brings valuable expertise, data, and outreach mechanisms to identify people missing tax credits and help them file.
Next Steps
New York’s Empire State Child Credit will increase for older children (up to age 16) in 2027 (up to $500 per child, so the state is continuing their outreach effort in 2027, building on lessons from 2026. NPL will continue to offer New York State advisory support on their 2027 campaign, and encourage more ambitious data sharing efforts to target families disconnected from the tax system but engaged in other New York benefits programs.
