Lessons Learned from Expanded Child Tax Credit Outreach to Immigrant Communities in Boston

The Child Tax Credit (CTC), expanded under the American Rescue Plan Act (ARPA) of 2021, dramatically reduced child poverty across the United States in 2021, but it did not reach all eligible families equally. Immigrant families continued to face barriers in learning about and claiming their tax benefits. We conducted a case study of Boston and its surrounding areas to identify lessons learned from outreach efforts driven by government officials and nonprofit partners to connect eligible families with the CTC, and to understand immigrant families’ experiences in learning about and claiming the credit.

This brief was updated on October 11, 2022. On pages 4 and 9, we clarified that the public charge rule was in effect between 2020 and 2021. We also corrected the name of Boston’s Mayor’s Office for Immigrant Advancement on page 5. And on page 6, we corrected Margalit Tepper’s affiliation as the former integration projects lead for the Massachusetts Immigrant & Refugee Advocacy Coalition.