Never too soon

It's never to soon to start thinking about taxes. Yes I said taxes. Now I realize that usually the mention of taxes, brings fear and visions of audits to the minds of most, but I'm talking about taxes with a community impact.

VITA, the volunteer income tax assistance program, provides free tax preparation to low to moderate income families, helping them receive all the credits they are entitled to and saving money on paid preparers.

There are two points I want to highlight from that previous paragraph:

1- moderate income - most of us qualify and with continuing lay offs and the rise in unemployment many who may not have qualified in the past will most definitely qualify now for this wonderful program.

2-The key word in this program is volunteer. Yep, we need and we rely on volunteers to bring this program to our community. So it's never to soon to start thinking about ways that each of us can help the community. Of course tax preparers are the cornerstone of our VITA program, but there are many other ways to help out as well, each role playing an important part in our success.

United Way of Tucson and Southern Arizona has lead the VITA program through community partnerships and the EITC TaskForce of Southern Arizona for the past 5 tax seasons growing the program from just over 1,100 returns for tax year 2004 to over 8,000 returns for tax year 2008. All of this made possible my community partnerships and volunteers.

One of the reasons for the impressive increase in the number of returns this year was our task force grew and our efforts expanded across Southern Arizona due to our partnership with United Way of Pinal County and Catholic Community Services.

For the first time were were able to offer the self-prep option at a few of our sites. This was made possible by our partnership with Intuit. This option allowed tax payers access to Intuit's Turbo Tax Freedom Edition and Intuit volunteers were on hand to assist with questions.

And if that weren't enough we also were able to bring the Beehive program another self-prep option to some sites courtesy of a grant from WalMart. This program was completely self-prep, although VITA volunteers were on hand to support these tax payers.

By now I'm hoping that you can see the impact that VITA has had to the Tucson, Pima County and Southern Arizona community and why we need to start recruiting our volunteer team now.

There are many ways you can help. All volunteer positions include free training and on site support. For more information email vitavolunteers@unitedwaytucson.org or call 520.903.3949