There were 7 million of you out there, many of them moms, who recently missed out on the Earned Income Tax Credit. The EITC is a key opportunity during tax time for working Americans to infuse some cash into their households. For a filer with children -- this averaged to $3074 in 2013. Yet, year after year some get caught into the three main traps that prevent them from receiving important benefits that make a huge difference to a family’s bottom line.

TOP 3 EXCUSES:

1. I don’t know about the credit -- or perhaps whether I qualify? Missing out on the earned income tax credit means you can miss out on up to $6,242 in the earned income tax credit. There are plenty of ways to find out if you qualify and our all-woman-software development team in partnership with the IRS has built one of them here.

You have got more than a month to go. These tax credits and much more is within reach as long as you get started by finding out whether you qualify for the EITC here and getting the filing assistance or resources available to you.

Rose Afriyie is the Executive Director of mRelief, an all-woman software development team that has built easy-to-use web and text messaging tools for families to find out whether they qualify for social services. Dayanand Manoli, Assistant Professor, UT-Austin and Researcher at the IRS Research Division also contributed insights to this piece.