With tax time upon us, the Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment has an unusual offer: It wants to help.
But why would an agency better known for vaccination campaigns and pollution regulations be interested in providing tax support?
The answer lies in a 4-year-old CDPHE program intended to improve families’ economic mobility as a way of improving community health. And it’s another example of how public health agencies are thinking more broadly about their mission and including the underlying socioeconomic circumstances that can contribute to poor health.
“It’s simply that economic well-being is a driver of health. Health is connected to wealth,” said Isabel Dickson, the manager of CDPHE’s economic mobility program. “Health leads to wealth and vice versa.”
The program runs the Get Ahead Colorado campaign, which helps individuals and families find free help to file their taxes — for free, if eligible — and to make sure they are claiming all the tax credits to which they are entitled. Providing this service puts more money back into people’s pockets, allowing them to buy higher-quality food, pay for child care and safe housing, lowering their stress levels and just generally making life a little bit easier.
Take, for instance, the state and federal versions of the earned income tax credit. Dickson said estimates in Colorado are that only about 72% of eligible people are claiming the credit on their taxes — more than a quarter are not, making Colorado the fifth-worst state in the country for the rate of eligible people not claiming the credit.
The combined state and federal credits can total over $10,000 for some families, Dickson said. That’s valuable money that low- and middle-income Coloradans are missing out on from a credit regarded as the most effective antipoverty measure for working-age people. Research has suggested that the extra money from the earned income tax credit can reduce incidence of underweight births among other health benefits.
Families may also be eligible for other credits they aren’t claiming, such as child tax credits. Taken together, the earned income tax credit and the child tax credit are estimated to lift more than 10 million people out of poverty nationwide each year. (A temporarily expanded version of the child tax credit during the height of the COVID-19 pandemic, a measure backed by Colorado U.S. Sen. Michael Bennet, was estimated to have lifted an additional 4 million kids out of poverty.)
Dickson said there are a number of reasons people may not be filing for these credits. Some may think they don’t make enough to claim them or that receiving money from the tax credits will push them out of eligibility for programs like Medicaid. (It won’t.) Some people may be worried about claiming credits for fear of being audited. Language barriers can present a challenge.
“We are really seeking to get the word out to help people file taxes, help them file for free, just increase their comfort level with claiming tax credits,” Dickson said.
The Get Ahead Colorado program started as an initiative of the Colorado philanthropic organization Gary Community Ventures before transitioning to CDPHE. It works closely with other organizations called volunteer income tax assistance, or VITA, sites, which help people with tax filing. Of these, the most prominent is Tax Help Colorado, which is run by Mile High United Way.
Dickson said AmeriCorps volunteers working with Tax Help Colorado have helped people claim $14 million worth of credits over the past two years.More information on the program can be found at GetAheadColorado.org, or, in Spanish, HaciaAdelanteColorado.org. People can also ask for information by dialing 211.