Tax Time 2024: A closer look at the filing experience of LMI households

With the start of the 2024 tax season, we have a major opportunity to deepen our understanding of Tax Time and take action to ensure it always prioritizes people living on low-to-moderate incomes. Over the last 10 years, SaverLife has worked to better understand how Tax Time is impacting our members. We’ve achieved this by creating Tax Time content, rewards, and incentives that encourage SaverLife members to file with confidence and maximize their tax refunds.

In 2023 alone, we had more than 9,000 SaverLife members pledge their tax refunds to savings, and we awarded them over $15,000 in savings incentives.

And through SaverLife members’ ongoing engagement with our fintech app, we’ve confirmed through our research that tax season isn’t just a moment for people to take stock of their annual income; it’s a chance to plan for and take the next steps forward on their financial health journeys.

Understanding the significance of Tax Time on SaverLife members
How have SaverLife members navigated financial challenges and celebrated their accomplishments through Tax Time? Take SaverLife member Jamila for example.

Jamila and her wife were able to use the 2022 tax season to recover from debt accrued during a severe car accident. Through SaverLife, Jamila had created a rainy day fund that she could use to supplement their family’s income while her wife recovered. But even with their emergency savings, Jamila had to restrict their budget — and put buying a replacement car on hold.

Tax season offered Jamila and her family the financial break they needed. After using the SaverLife Tax Time Pledge to dedicate her refund to savings, Jamila submitted to our Tax Time storytelling contest and won $5,000 that she put toward a new car.

With her tax refund in savings and reliable transportation for her family, Jamila used Tax Time as a critical opportunity to get her short- and long-term financial health goals back on track.

Turning insights into action
Through previous years’ work, we know that SaverLife members — and millions of people like them — leverage their tax refunds to achieve financial stability and well-being. Yet, we’ve also learned that there are some very real challenges they face when it comes to filing.

These include:

• An overly complex and outdated tax code

• Understaffed IRS customer service

• Tax credits that don’t account for the financial realities of households living on low-to-moderate incomes

If we’re going to ensure that Tax Time continues to meet the needs and goals of people like Jamila, we need to start by better understanding the ripple effect that it has on people’s financial health. Most importantly, we need to inform the financial system about the manifold experiences people living on low-to-moderate incomes are having with the tax season. Why? So that they always have access to tax credits, services, and refunds that keep up with their evolving financial health journeys.

A closer look at SaverLife’s 2024 Tax Time work
SaverLife has kicked off our 2024 Tax Time efforts with the goal of shining a light on the intersection of financial health and taxes. To ensure SaverLife members have products and services that reflect their unique financial goals, we’ve created several tools that they can leverage during the tax season. These include:

• The 2024 Tax Time Pledge that encourages SaverLife members to pledge some or all of their tax refund to savings. 

• A Tax Time guide with timely and relevant information to help them file with confidence and maximize their tax refunds.

• A tax-related content series that addresses themes SaverLife members have identified are important to their financial health, like self-employment.

• A member forum where SaverLife members can post their Tax Time questions and receive advice and feedback from others. Last year, SaverLife members posted over 600 inquiries for more information on a variety of tax-related topics.

Additionally, our research efforts our underway to better understand our members’ financial experiences and savings journeys during tax season. We look forward to learning and sharing our findings over the course of the next several months.

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