Taxes

Our friend Emily is the first friend of ours who’s stopped by the Presbyterian Community Center (pictured above top), where every winter twice a week I volunteer doing taxes on the computer for mainly working-class people from the Smoketown, Highlands, Shelby Park, and Phoenix Hill neighborhoods and really from all over town, as part of the Louisville Asset Building Coalition’s activities and the Internal Revenue Service’s Volunteer Income Tax Assistance program. It’s a bit ironic then I’ve been doing this now for four years, starting when I lived four or five blocks away in Phoenix Hill (near where the Easter egg hunt was), given my checkered record with the IRS and with accounting. I usually enjoy talking with people and helping them garner Earned Income Tax Credit-enhanced refunds of up to $3,000 or so. Our clients are typically coming there instead of going to H and R Block or Jackson Hewitt, where they pay a couple of hundred dollars, plus a couple of hundred dollars more for an “instant refund,” which is really a short-term, high-interest loan, with their refund as collateral. We and the IRS can usually get people refunds, especially if they’re electronic direct-deposit refunds, within a couple of weeks (we also file electronically). With every client (and by now I’ve probably done a couple of hundred people’s taxes over the years – though I have some repeat clients) I learn new things about the tax code (ever changing) and I like the software we work with and the other volunteers and PCC staff. The staff and volunteers have changed. Recently, the longtime lead volunteer, Bill, and lead staffperson, Wanda, left. But other colleagues such as Susannah and Tonita (spelling?) (pictured above bottom) are fun to work with. As a benefit of this program, we always get to do our own taxes here (and can also do friends). Even though Stephanie sometimes notices things that I with my better trained eye shouldn’t have and even though we still sometimes owe taxes, I’ve done our taxes there for the past four years. This year we still owe the federal government a small amount, which I’ll need to pay shortly, but we already got our electronically deposited state refund in our bank account. Last night Emily beat me there, so Susannah did her taxes, but that worked out find. Admittedly, sometimes this is less fun over time, both because the IRS has stepped up oversight and training requirements, to try to lower our error rate, and because early in the tax season we’re overwhelmed with clients desperate for refunds and, without enough volunteers, experience, and training, and without great organization, it’s sometimes kind of chaotic. Then later in the tax season we frequently don’t have many clients, so it’s kind of dull. This year we’ve gotten a boost in business in the last few weeks from mainly retirees who are only filing in order to qualify for the several-hundred-dollar “fiscal stimulus” rebates the government is supposedly paying in a coupel of months to everyone who files taxes. Unfortunately, the one client I worked with last night a guy who lives in Louisville's Clifton Heights neighborhood and works at a small factory nearby - because of his complex strategy in dealing with IRS recapture of any refund for back child support - owed substantially more than we did this year. Vincent's father also told us two weeks ago in the pitch for spring break visitation, that the IRS would be recapturing most of his tax refund for back child support. But I will be very surprised if she sees any of that money, as he's been saying things like that for years and she's never seen any recaptured tax refund money, and in fact has only got a grand total of $25 in child support in the time since she and Vincent moved to Louisville three years ago.