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BizBuzz
VITA provides vital services at tax time. Since 1980, students in the College of Business Administration have been filing tax returns for low-income earners—and getting great experience for themselves—by participating in Volunteer Income Tax Assistance (VITA), a community-based program sponsored by the Internal Revenue Service in partnership with the local community. The IRS provides training, and the college handles recruiting and secures properly outfitted computer labs for various training events.
“Our volunteers help people whose income is generally $39,000 and below,” said Jimmy R. Miller, a student in the Executive Master of Science in Taxation (EMST) program, who served as a liaison between the college and the IRS this year. “We even e-file so that they can receive their refunds faster.” Taxpayers can show up at designated sites at designated times and get the help they need. This year, the college’s volunteers, along with a few from the College of Law—all of whom will log about twenty hours—already are working at two sites: Navarro’s Pharmacy on S.W. 8th Street, very near the University Park campus, and the Jorge Mas Canosa Youth Center in Roncelli Park in Sweetwater. Doors will remain open until the end of the tax season. Preparing to prepare the forms takes dedication. The volunteer recruitment and training process starts well before tax season arrives. “In the three months leading up to the spring semester, we recruit students to participate in the VITA program,” Miller said. “This year, we are fortunate to have had a great group of about 25 volunteers who have taken time out of their busy schedules to give back to the community. They come from different backgrounds; some work full time, others work part time, and they all have a full course load. Many are active in Florida International University’s Accounting Association (FIU-AA) or in Beta Alpha Psi, the national accounting fraternity.” Once recruited, volunteers undergo basic training that includes gross income, exclusions, earned income credit, deductions (standard vs. itemized), and all of the basic topics needed to fill out a 1040 form. At a two-hour orientation session, Ana M. Raposo, senior tax specialist, IRS, discussed the program and showed attendees how to access Link and Learn, an online course in which they can read the law and take a certification test to verify their mastery of the information. They then spend two full Saturdays training in TaxWise, the IRS tax software. “During these hands-on training sessions, volunteers have an opportunity to work through exercises and become experts in the software features so they can perform well when they have a taxpayer in front of them,” Miller said. Volunteers benefit from VITA—personally and professionally. Miller has been interested in VITA since participating for the first time in 2002 while he was a student at Miami Dade College. “I planned to start a career in taxes and got involved because I thought it would be good for our community and would give me hands-on training in tax software—knowledge that I knew I could use in the real world, whether I opted to pursue a career in a big firm or a local one,” he said. “There’s value in giving service, and in VITA, you help your neighbors and walk away with nice set of skills.” This year’s hours of operation are Wednesdays from 6:00 p.m.-8:00 p.m. and Saturdays from 11:00 a.m. to 3:00 p.m. at Navarro’s, and Wednesdays from 6:00 p.m.-8:00 p.m. and Saturdays from 10:00 a.m.-2:00 p.m. at the Jorge Mas Canosa Youth Center. VITA is part of the college’s Civic Engagement Initiative. More information about both the Civic Engagement Initiative and VITA are available at http://business.fiu.edu/service/index.htm. |
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