Tax filing program aids campus, town
Halfmann, Alex
Issue date: 2/28/08 Section: News
Students and members of the Kirksville community can cash in on Beta Alpha Psi's Volunteer Income Tax Assistance Program.
VITA is aimed at helping lower-income members of the Kirksville community and University students with their tax returns and provide service learning for Truman's accounting students.
"It's a great opportunity to help the community," said senior Nick Segbers, vice president of community service for Beta Alpha Psi. "People can come in and get their taxes done for free, where it could cost them a couple hundred dollars to do it somewhere."
VITA was instituted by the Internal Revenue Service in 1975 and is offered at schools, libraries, community centers and other public locations nationwide.
The program began Feb. 23 and has sessions from 8 a.m. to 3 p.m. March 1 and 29 in Violette Hall 1424.
VITA caps the maximum gross income for the returns at $40,000. Segbers said anything more than that can get complicated and that the volunteers advise those persons to seek a professional.
Smaller incomes have a tendency to be simpler, providing a learning experience and a great addition to a résumé for the volunteers, he said.
"It's really great for these students to do this because it's real world experience to file these tax forms and most are going into accounting and some point in their career they are going to have to know how to do this," Segbers said. "It looks great on the résumés for the people who want to hire you."
Segbers said the volunteers spend an average of an hour on each client.
He said some student forms are simple and can take less than half an hour. Some complex forms with two earners may take an hour and a half to two hours.
"[VITA] is a really big part of what Beta Alpha Psi does, and we emphasize this a lot when we recruit our members and advertise our organization," Segbers said.
Beta Alpha Psi completed 201 returns last year and filed 63 this past Saturday.
VITA is aimed at helping lower-income members of the Kirksville community and University students with their tax returns and provide service learning for Truman's accounting students.
"It's a great opportunity to help the community," said senior Nick Segbers, vice president of community service for Beta Alpha Psi. "People can come in and get their taxes done for free, where it could cost them a couple hundred dollars to do it somewhere."
VITA was instituted by the Internal Revenue Service in 1975 and is offered at schools, libraries, community centers and other public locations nationwide.
The program began Feb. 23 and has sessions from 8 a.m. to 3 p.m. March 1 and 29 in Violette Hall 1424.
VITA caps the maximum gross income for the returns at $40,000. Segbers said anything more than that can get complicated and that the volunteers advise those persons to seek a professional.
Smaller incomes have a tendency to be simpler, providing a learning experience and a great addition to a résumé for the volunteers, he said.
"It's really great for these students to do this because it's real world experience to file these tax forms and most are going into accounting and some point in their career they are going to have to know how to do this," Segbers said. "It looks great on the résumés for the people who want to hire you."
Segbers said the volunteers spend an average of an hour on each client.
He said some student forms are simple and can take less than half an hour. Some complex forms with two earners may take an hour and a half to two hours.
"[VITA] is a really big part of what Beta Alpha Psi does, and we emphasize this a lot when we recruit our members and advertise our organization," Segbers said.
Beta Alpha Psi completed 201 returns last year and filed 63 this past Saturday.
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