Senior Revenue and Taxation Leaders from 11 states
May 2025 - November 2026
Why This Matters For Families
Across the country, millions of families are living paycheck to paycheck, struggling to afford their basics on low to moderate incomes. To support these families, 31 states and the federal government have instituted the Earned Income Tax Credit (EITC), which can provide families with thousands of dollars after filing their federal and state taxes. Tax credits have become a critical anti-poverty program in the United States, providing an essential source of cash for many American workers and families.
The 2021 expansion of the Child Tax Credit (CTC) in the American Rescue Plan reduced child poverty in the United States by 40% that year. However, accessing credits like the CTC is notoriously difficult as they are claimed during annual tax filing. The bipartisan, highly successful EITC reaches only 80% of eligible households nationwide, with lower-income, less-educated households being most likely to leave money on the table compared to other populations. The IRS estimates that roughly 20% of EITC-eligible and CTC-eligible individuals do not receive the credit payments they are owed — the federal EITC alone averaged almost $3000 in TY24.
Tax filing is an underutilized, and all too often, overlooked benefits delivery system for low-income families. Tax credits offer critical financial benefits to filers, yet tax system administrators are rarely invited into critical conversations about benefits delivery. When state revenue leaders share and learn implementation strategies, everyone involved in the tax system benefits.
Implementation Challenge
Getting public programs approved and funded takes enormous effort, but it's only half the battle. After the bill is signed and the money is appropriated, another challenge awaits: delivering a new service to people that is on time, on budget, and working as expected. Despite the importance of implementation, few mechanisms exist to help public servants stand up new and innovative efforts.
Even when no playbook exists, there are strategies to smooth implementation. Loose networks of public servants tasked with similar demands emerge to bridge knowledge gaps, sometimes self organizing into more formal structures designed to share lessons, pitfalls, and solutions. With few spaces for the state teams leading the implementation of tax credit programs to have deeply technical conversations about engineering, data, outreach, and system design, the tax delivery system is missing opportunities for collaboration, information sharing, and reuse between programs.
Our Approach
NPL brought together a core group of state tax administrators for regular, deeply technical conversations about the challenges of implementing and improving tax credit delivery. The goal of each gathering is to create a space where revenue leaders could candidly share what they were trying, learn from approaches underway in other states, and identify opportunities to adapt and build on one another’s work.
Across six sessions, the group shared implementation experiences and workshopped common challenges in areas including outreach to non-filers, data sharing between tax and benefits agencies, and advance payment of credits. NPL also worked more deeply with four participating states to explore opportunities to put these ideas into practice.
OBJECTIVE
Create a space for revenue agency staff and the New Practice Lab tax team to learn from one another about credit uptake challenges, innovations, and progress
WHAT WE DID
Hosted six monthly meetings during which each participant had the opportunity to share about their state’s efforts and workshop ideas with other experts
OBJECTIVE
Document and share leading practices for reuse, scale, and adaptation across states
WHAT WE DID
As a cohort, defined priority intervention areas including more precise outreach strategies, data sharing between revenue and benefits agencies, and advance payment of credit to build common resources, toolkits, etc.
OBJECTIVE
Provide technical support to at least 3 state cohort members to pilot an intervention
WHAT WE DID
Worked with 4 states from the cohort so far, and continue to look for ways to support others in 2026
What We Learned
State revenue leaders are eager for opportunities to connect with peers working through similar implementation questions and challenges. The working group created a space for administrators to speak openly and candidly about what they are trying, compare approaches across states, and learn from credit uptake initiatives already underway elsewhere.
The conversations also reflected a broader shift in how some state revenue leaders see their role. Many are increasingly embracing the idea that, alongside their traditional tax administration responsibilities, they are also administering benefits that can provide significant financial support to families. That shift can change how agencies approach tax administration — including finding new ways to use existing data and processes to proactively identify residents who have overpaid taxes or may be missing refunds and credits they are owed.
It can be validating for tax administrators to connect on similar questions and challenges, and have a community to speak openly and candidly. There are many credit uptake initiatives happening across states to learn from and compare notes. As states test approaches to outreach, data sharing, and tax filing, their experiences can give other states a stronger starting point for designing and improving their own efforts.
Next Steps
The working group surfaced several opportunities to build on this shared learning, including improving tax credit access among non-filers and intermittent filers and identifying promising approaches that could be adapted or tested across states. We also identified six states that wanted to participate in a “letter writing cohort” in which they collectively learned about leading practices for tax administrator communications and conducted a letter (re)design sprint with NPL designers.
The relationships and lessons developed through the cohort will help states continue learning from one another as they pursue their own tax credit implementation efforts.
