Direct File: How Parent and Family Engagement in Design Can Improve Access to Refundable Credits

The IRS, with the support of partners like the CSSP, has been ensuring that families who are most impacted by barriers to tax filing, such as the  complexity and costs, have been delivering feedback throughout the design and development process of this new Direct File program. Based on what CSSP heard through this engagement, several early lessons emerged not only about how to improve the tool based on feedback that reflects a diversity of circumstances and situations, but also about the needs that tax filers have as they go through the process that the tool itself cannot  address.

(3 pp)