United Way makes filing taxes simple and free

By Fred West
Originally published 01/22/2012 in The Greenville News (subscription required)

Fred West

Is there anything worse than the sometimes confusing, always time-consuming, anxiety-inducing

stress of tax season? I may be exaggerating a bit, but if you’re a family struggling to make ends meet, the process of determining whether you owe Uncle Sam or Uncle Sam owes you, can be pretty unnerving.

But tax season doesn’t have to be so difficult.

In conjunction with our work to improve the financial stability of individuals and families in Greenville County, for the past seven years United Way has offered a free tax preparation service that helps alleviate some of that tax season anxiety.

Since 2005, United Way’s Volunteer Income Tax Assistance program, or VITA, has helped more than 10,600 low to middle income taxpayers in Greenville County file their tax returns for free. Led by IRS-certified volunteers from our community, VITA provides this free service to individuals and families with a household income of less than $50,000 a year.

This year, we’re excited to be able to expand the program to United Ways in five Upstate counties – Greenville, Pickens, Anderson, Spartanburg and Laurens. All totaled, there will be 31 sites across the Upstate where volunteers will be available to help prepare your taxes.

VITA volunteers help taxpayers maximize their potential returns by ensuring all of the tax credits and deductions for which they qualify are claimed. Many people don’t have access to affordable tax services, or are unaware of all the potential credits and deductions they may be eligible to claim. VITA assists taxpayers in finding those tax credits and deductions, especially child and education tax credits and the Earned Income Tax Credit, or EITC – an IRS program recognized nationally for lifting more working families out of poverty than any other federal program.

Through VITA, all returns are filed electronically, and refunds can be deposited directly into your bank account in as little as seven to 10 days. By facilitating quick refunds, we hope taxpayers will resist the urge to surrender a portion of their refund to those immediate, and costly, rebate anticipation loans, which are often high-risk and marketed toward the working poor.

United Way’s goal in offering this free service is simple: We want to help more individuals and families in our community achieve greater financial stability. To that end, we’re focusing on a variety of programs and initiatives that help people increase income, build savings, and gain and sustain assets.

So far, VITA has been a very successful component of the equation, which also includes education and job training programs to boost income, and the IDA (Individual Development Account) initiative and financial literacy programs to build savings and gain assets. Last year alone, United Way of Greenville County funded 16 programs under the financial stability umbrella, helping more than 10,000 people in Greenville County do things like earn their G.E.D., receive highly marketable job training and qualify for home mortgages.

We’re excited about this progress because alongside United Way’s work to improve school readiness for young children and increase high school graduation rates for youth, we believe building greater financial stability for individuals and families is an essential piece of creating long-term “cycles of success.”

We know that children who enter school ready to succeed are more likely to excel through the years and graduate high school. We know that teens who graduate from high school are less likely to get into trouble and more likely to earn a livable wage. And we know higher wages produce greater financial stability for families, with more savings for higher education, healthcare and home ownership. The cycle is complete as those families with increased financial resources are more likely to raise children ready to succeed in school and continue the cycle.

We’ve seen great progress in these areas, but there is still much work to be done. We encourage you to join the effort by volunteering your time via United Way Hands On Greenville, spreading the word about our work, or simply by getting your taxes prepared for free.

VITA sites will start to open Jan. 17 and appointments are now being scheduled by dialing United Way’s 24-hour community resource line, 2-1-1.

If we can make filing your taxes so simple, just imagine what else we can accomplish together.

(Fred West is chair-elect of United Way of Greenville County’s Community Impact Council. For more information about VITA, click here or call 2-1-1.)