Students offer free tax help

Beta Alpha Psi is helping Truman students and the Kirksville community file taxes free of charge through the annual Voluntary Income Tax Assistance program.

Associate professor of accounting Alan Davis, the VITA adviser, said the program, which concludes at the end of March, provides assistance filing both state and federal income taxes to students and Kirksville residents.

He said the members of BAP, an international scholastic and professional organization for Financial Information Professionals, and graduate and undergraduate accounting students prepare the tax returns.

Davis said BAP is preparing for the last session on March 26 from 8 a.m. to 3 p.m. The deadline for sending the taxes is April 18.

Davis said VITA is sponsored by the Internal Revenue Service and is the only VITA in this part of Missouri.

The IRS provides the software for filing taxes and BAP provides the labor to help the community free of charge.

"We saw a large growth in VITA volunteers in 2008, so we decided to more aggressively market," Davis said. "And since then [the attendance] has been stable."

Davis said it was mostly the Kirksville residents who used the program this year.

He said he estimates about 70 percent of their clients this year will be residents whereas in the past, it has been a fairly equal divide between students and the community. He said it might be due to the availability of free online resources which can help students with their tax returns.

Davis said the main advantage of the VITA program is that the service is free. Most of their clients are low-to-middle-income earners and can't afford to pay for the service, Davis said.

"We provide a very good service for international students," Davis said. "[USA] has treaties with many different countries so rules for international students are so much more complex. We are the only ones who can tell them what to do."

He said some local accounting firms even direct clients to VITA because some tax returns are not worth the firm's time and effort.

"One of the things is that we try not to compete with the local CPAs," Davis said. "So we have a screening process for tax returns that are too complicated because we don't want to take business away from the local accountants."

He also said it is a win-win situation because not only do they help the clients but the VITA program also equips accounting students with practical experience for their future. He said this year they have about 60 volunteers who assist with preparing taxes.

Davis said each year he evaluates the quality of the program with his volunteers and looks for ways to improve the program for the next year.

Senior Jennifer Kalla, vice president of VITA, said this year there were three training sessions for the volunteers to practice filing taxes and to get familiar with the software used for the process. She said as the main innovation this year, they introduced a video to make the training more effective.

Kalla also said since last year, they have utilized volunteer coordinators as well as greeters and tax assemblers, which is a big improvement.

"The volunteer coordinators look at the client's information and go through and check the documents," Kalla said. "Then they match that return with a volunteer who has the expertise to handle that return."

She said the major challenge they face is coordinating with volunteers' schedules.

"The only problems we come across are when clients come to us and they don't have the information we need to do the return or their information is too complicated for us to handle," Kalla said. "Sometimes we might not catch [that] we have a problem until we are further in the process."

She said so far the program has run very smoothly without any problems or complaints from the clients.

Senior volunteer Ivana Tjung said she is in charge of publicizing the event as well as helping with the training process, besides filing taxes.

"For me, because I like tax, it is really fun," said Tjung. "You get to know how to work in the real world. You also meet the client. ... I think they are satisfied with our service, that is why they come to us," Tjung said. "Most of the time, some couples come every year so I think we have a good response."

Tjung said when she filed her taxes with VITA,it saved time and the returns are less likely to have errors because the program is strictly supervised.

She said as an international student she thinks the program is very useful because there are different rules for international students.

Steven Sorhus, certified public accountant at Harden Cummins Moss & Miller, LLC said the VITA program is a great way to get assistance for those who can't afford the services of a professional CPA.

He said HCMM targets a different segment of clients than the VITA program and therefore VITA doesn't take business away from HCMM.

"The demographics of the clients are different enough that it doesn't hurt us," Sorhus said. "The tax filing of clients who recognize that they need a CPA are typically more complex. On the other hand, VITA helps those with much simpler tax returns, who are just not comfortable doing it on their own and just need a helping hand."

He said even though it is students who prepare tax returns for the clients, they are supervised by qualified professors, so accuracy is not a problem.

"If they didn't have that professional supervisory role I wouldn't recommend them [VITA] to anyone," Sorhus said. "But since the students are supervised, I think it is reliable."

(Additional reporting by Sally LaJoie.)