With the 2024 tax filing season underway, trained Cal Poly accounting students are offering free tax help on campus through the Volunteer Income Tax Assistance (VITA) program Saturdays through March 15. VITA offers free tax help to qualifying taxpayers with $70,000 or less of gross income. VITA also will hold two off-campus locations in Oceano and Santa Maria from February 8 through March 15. Tax filing for businesses and individuals started January 15 and January 27, respectively and the deadline is Saturday, April 15.
Details:
When: 9:30 a.m. – 2 p.m., Saturdays, February 1 through March 15
Where: Cal Poly Business Building (#3), near California Boulevard, third floor
Register: https://orfalea.calpoly.edu/volunteer-income-tax-assistance/
Cal Poly is one of about 12,000 VITA sites nationwide, providing valuable community service and a powerful Learn by Doing experience for students. VITA helps individuals who generally make no more than $70,000, persons with disabilities and limited English-speaking taxpayers.
Nearly 50 years ago, CSU Northridge professor Gary Iskowitz recognized a growing issue with questionable tax preparers scamming low-income individuals, so he created a program to provide local taxpayers with free tax return preparation by accounting students. He trained a group of his students, who agreed to do free tax returns for low-income residents. “People lined up around the block waiting for us,” Iskowitz told the Journal of Accountancy. The effort grew into a national IRS program called Volunteer Income Tax Assistance, or VITA.
The first Cal Poly VITA clinic took place in 1972 and continued off and on through 1992, when it then became an annual event. Since 2005, Orfalea College of Business students have prepared nearly 9,000 returns, assisting about 750 residents of San Luis Obispo and Santa Barbara counties each year.
Student volunteers staff on-campus VITA clinics and, in Santa Maria clinics, work with the United Way of Northern Santa Barbara County. Each student is IRS-certified to prepare returns using basic forms such as 1040, 1040A, 1040EZ, 540, 540A, 540EZ, and some supporting forms. Orfalea College of Business faculty and volunteer CPAs review and file the returns.
This year’s VITA program is led by faculty members Trisha Daughtrey and Steven Danowitz. The service will also be offered at two off-campus locations in Oceano and Santa Maria from February 8 through March 15.
To find out more, make an appointment or fill out necessary paperwork, please visit the Cal Poly VITA program online at orfalea.calpoly.edu/volunteer-income-tax-assistance/.