the “Tax Refund Project”, 2015

The Project

Sponsored by the Women’s Center for Education and Career Advancement (WCECA), my volunteers and I directed the poorest of the poor to participating soup kitchens where they could apply for a tax credit due them by dint of their living in NYC all year, despite having earned little or no income.  With an arts grant from the Seedtime Fund, we put out a “Call for Prints” for posters to market the Project, subsidized the artists, and printed the posters.  The 12 posters, each by a different artist, are displayed below.

Statistics for Tax Year 2014

For the tax year 2014, for which people filed from February to May 2015, we helped people submit a total of 570 tax credit applications.  If you multiply that number by $62.50 (the amount of this tax credit per year), you find that $35,625 was added to NYC’s economy, money that truly was  immediately spent on food, health items, transportation, and, as one woman blushingly admitted, flowers.