Preparing income tax forms can be daunting, especially for low income or older individuals who can't afford to pay for professional tax preparation services.
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That's where the Volunteer Income Tax Assistance (VITA) program can help. Under the auspices of the Internal Revenue Service, volunteers are trained to help people with incomes of up to $48,000 in preparing basic tax returns.
The CSULB chapter of Beta Alpha Psi, a national financial student honor organization, as well as the Accounting Society-both in the College of Business Administration-are among the many organizations throughout the nation who provide VITA volunteers.
"The program has been running for several years, but in the last couple of years we've been able to get more accounting students involved and have had a substantial increase in our volunteer numbers," said student Charmaine Baird, CSULB VITA coordinator.
"All 46 of our volunteers have been certified by the IRS through five six-hour training sessions and by passing two exams. All volunteers are certified to do basic tax returns and international student tax returns and a few have gone the extra step to take the intermediate course. Each volunteer is required to do four hours a week but many of them do more than the minimum."
This spring, the CSULB students completed and e-filed a little more than 75 returns as well as about 15 international students' returns during VITA's first three weeks in operation, Baird said. "Most of these returns are for the members of our campus but many have been for those disadvantaged individuals from the surrounding community. Since our site is one of the only sites that is open during all business days, many of the individuals from the community come to our site."
To learn more about CSULB's VITA program, call (562) 985-8605, e-mail vita.csulb@gmail.com, or visit www.csulb.edu/~bap, then on click on VITA.
