Sydney Kate Watson, asst. arts & living editor
The Volunteer Income Tax Assistance (VITA) program is an IRS tax preparation service offered to Berry students, faculty, staff and community members for free. The program began on Jan. 28 and continues through April 15. It is offered each week on Friday from 3 p.m. to 7 p.m. and Saturday 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. in the basement of Green.
According to VITA Co-Student Director Isabelle Rousseau, senior, the free service is extremely beneficial to students and community members who cannot afford to hire a CPA or use an online tax software.
“Typically, taxes can cost between probably $50 minimum, up to hundreds or thousands of dollars,” Rousseau said.
According to Rousseau, filing taxes can be an intimidating and mature task. Taxes are something everyone encounters but financial literacy is not always taught in schools.
“The intimidation of having to file taxes it’s like something you always grow up hearing about but you don’t necessarily know where to start,” Rousseau said.
VITA Co-Student Director Julia Schnader, senior, echoed this sentiment and added that the notion of filing taxes is unknown.
“Most of the time students don’t know where to start with it,” Schnader said. “It’s something we don’t really cover in school; we don’t understand quite what, it means to file your taxes.”
Even if young adults across the nation may struggle with financial literacy, VITA aims to help first time filers overcome the fear of the unknown for the first time according to Advanced Preparer Amari Slack, senior.
“Having your first experience here is great because we have a great staff,” Slack said “They’re willing to help, wanting to help, which is fantastic.”
Besides just wanting to provide a smooth first-time experience, the VITA staff makes it a point to explain the process to first-time filers. So, come next tax season, individuals will have a better understanding of how the process works.
“We try to break that down and show them as we’re doing the returns, this is step-by-step how we do it, so that they can understand how taxes work and how their income works,” Schnader said.
According to Rousseau, this break down process allows individuals to realize that filing taxes is no longer a frightening, mythical experience.
“There’s a really awesome moment to educate people about the process and about the system and why it’s important and kind of ease their nerves,” Rousseau said.
The VITA program has been open only to Berry individuals during the COVID-19 pandemic, but before March 2020, the program provided tax services for low-income individuals and families in the Rome community. For the first time in nearly two years, VITA will once again open to the Rome community this upcoming weekend. VITA reviewer Allison Ivey, senior, is excited to welcome the community back onto campus and serve them through this program.
“[In] alot of Berry jobs you work with the Berry community, and you don’t really get much interaction with the outside community, which I think is a really unique thing about this program,” Ivey said.
Besides being a fantastic resource to the Berry and Rome communities, the VITA program is a unique and career building opportunity for accounting, finance and economics majors. The program is nationally recognized by accounting professionals across the nation since it is IRS certified.
“It’s a nationally recognized program, so in the world of accounting people know what it is, and they really respect individuals who volunteer in the program,” Rousseau said.
Before working at the VITA program many students take ACC 331, Tax Topics. Students who have an interest in taxes and want to be a part of the program must become certified on their own time through a series of tests administered by the IRS.
There are three different levels of certifications an individual can achieve: greeter, basic preparers and advanced preparers. Greeters are certified to welcome clients and make sure the client’s paperwork is in order for the preparer, basic preparers are certified to file limited types of claims, advanced preparers are not limited in the type of returns they can file, reviewers look over the returns to ensure everything is correct and the program directors submit the returns to the IRS. The process is very thorough, and this year the program is lucky to have a staff of all advanced preparers.
“This year we are super fortunate to have a whole team of advanced preparers which essentially means that they are not limited to what type of return they can do,” Rousseau said.
Students who work as members of VITA are given an opportunity to have a one-of-a-kind learning experience to help them solidify their career choices and the content they are learning in class.
“It’s really helped me to understand the concepts I learn in class, and really see how I can apply them into the real world,” Schnader said.
Not only are student workers able to apply what they are learning in class to their VITA work, but students are also gaining invaluable job experience that is hard to come by in the accounting field.
“You’re getting to work with clients, which is something that we don’t get to do at jobs at Berry or at internships,” Slack said.
With the combination of soft and hard skill utilization through the program, student workers are culminating their professional skills to show employers they can learn the skills need for a position.
“You can’t prepare for everything because different jobs will use different software and different accounting methods, you can’t account for it fully, but what you can do is show that you can be taught a job and you can learn a software and you can go get certified,” Slack said.
According to Rousseau, one of the most unique parts of working in VITA is the community of individuals in the field.
“When you’re in the tax prep room, with all the people from your classes and you get to really know them outside of the academic setting; that’s really special,” Rousseau said.
Students who made an income in 2021, must file taxes. Slack emphasized that the VITA program is here to help navigate this process.
“The whole goal is to be helpful to our community, to serve our community, so don’t hesitate to come in,” Slack said.