Building Economic Futures for Americans with Disabilities
Real Economic Impact Tour
About the REI Tour
Building Economic Futures for Americans with Disabilities
The Real Economic Impact Tour (REI Tour) is a national initiative delivering free tax preparation and filing assistance, along with other asset building strategies to low-income persons with disabilities. The REI Tour is a public-private collaboration designed to provide Americans with disabilities insight, tools and resources to improve their lives through financial education, training and counseling. The REI Tour is designed to promote:
- The real economic impact of persons with disabilities, by increasing the number of tax filers with disabilities and use of tax credits and deductions;
- Building of local partnership network between persons with disabilities and their families; disability and community-based organizations, and companies that sponsor the Tour; and
- Measurable economic growth in participating cities.
This ground-breaking effort has been the gateway for many to explore opportunities connecting them to financial independence. This is accomplished through community partnerships in more than 50 cities throughout the country linking consumers to non-profit organizations, federal agencies and private-sector companies.
Activities in each city will include:
- Volunteer tax preparation assistance
- Financial education classes
- Training about access and use of public benefits
- Special events to connect to financial institutions
- Credit, debt, and homeownership counseling
- Audio conference series to all stakeholders on issues regarding accessible sites, tax provisions and credits, public benefits and much more
- Training about federal work incentives to promote self-sufficiency
Most Significant Accomplishments for 62 REI Tour cities in 2008 are:
- Increase of 150% over 2007 in number of free tax returns prepared for persons with disabilities - 90,653.
- Increased refunds to taxpayers with disabilities from 2007 to 2008, from $32.6 million to $81.5 million.
- Created over 2,016,165 outreach contacts in asset building education and media information.
- Increased the number of local partners by 56% from 355 in 2007 to 555 in 2008.
For more about the REI Tour, see REI Tour Mission.