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Ending Homelessness

United Way of King County and its many community partners have established a goal and a plan to end homelessness in King County in the next 10 years.  To achieve this goal we will pursue a number of strategies to help people move up and out of homelessness more quickly and permanently, and to prevent people from falling into homelessness.  Homelessness prevention will require us to more effectively address issues such as income poverty and the lack of opportunities for low-income people to accumulate wealth and create personal safety nets that will prevent them from ever being at risk of homelessness.

The Earned Income Tax Credit (EITC) Campaign is one program in a broad range of community based strategies to help people maximize their income and to move toward wealth creation.  The objectives of the EITC Campaign are to help low income working people in King County to:

 
  • Increase knowledge and utilization of tax benefits such as the EITC and Child Tax Credits (CTC)
  • Increase asset building skills and opportunities
  • Increase disposable earned income
  • Increase utilization of financial institutions and instruments
  • Decrease utilization of high cost financial services and predatory lending products such as refund anticipation loans (RALs).

We believe that by striving to achieve these objectives and continuing each year to expand the number of people we serve, we will be able to reduce the number of people who are living from paycheck to paycheck and increase the number who are able to plan and save for their future.  By increasing income, reducing debt and creating wealth they will become more financially secure and less likely to fall into homelessness.


White Center Library

The White Center Library has a long history of offering free tax preparation services and hosted an EITC site for the third year in 2005. In 2004 we prepared 352 tax returns generating $458,1444 in Federal Refunds and $148,680 in EITC Refunds.

In 2005, the library remained one of our busiest sites and we look forward to improving the service to White Center residents by increasing the hours of operation & the number of Spanish speaking volunteers.

  • Returns Prepared
372
  • Total Federal Refunds
$564,658
  • Average Refund
$1,518
  • Total EITC
$170,409
  • Average EITC
$1,508
  • # EITC Claimants
113
  • % EITC Claimants
30%
  • Total Child Tax Credit
$184,102
  • Average AGI
$22,297
"One woman mentioned how glad she was that she was able to take this opportunity to get her taxes done for free. With the rising cost of many of the basic living expenses, etc. it's good to know that she can always come to us for help on her taxes. Not only does she save money, but she also saves time and does not have to worry about the complexity of taxes... she trusts our knowledge & training, etc."
~EITC VOLUNTEER

DOWNLOAD EITC Report 2005(PDF*)

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