TaxAide program needs some help
Published 9:00 am Sunday, August 14, 2016
AARP TaxAide has served the citizens of Albert Lea and the surrounding area for over 20 years, the last 12 in conjunction with, and the support of, Senior Resources of Freeborn County.
AARP TaxAide volunteers are certified by the IRS. This certification requires studying federal tax law, Minnesota tax law, doing practice problems and passing a certification test. All this is prior to spending over 2 1/2 months — two to three days a week — actually doing federal, state of Minnesota and Minnesota property tax returns.
The TaxAide program served over 810 clients in 2016. The program submitted 2,110 federal, state and property tax forms from the Albert Lea location. The average adjusted gross income our client was $13,589. TaxAide of Albert Lea typically prepares taxes for low income, senior citizens and the disabled. The average refund processed by Albert Lea TaxAide was $1,104, which computes to $894,240. TaxAide did not create this money, but did help bring it to Albert Lea at no cost to our clients.
The average client in the Midwest pays $192 for an itemized federal or state return and more if a property tax return is included. The cost to our clients is zero.
On the downside, the number of volunteers for this program has been decreasing while requirements of the IRS and AARP have been increasing. The number of preparers doing taxes last year was four, with two supervisors doing quality checks. This is down from a high of 11 a few years ago. We have already lost one preparer and one supervisor this year. This reduction in numbers puts much added stress on the few volunteers we currently have and may force a closing of this much needed program.
TaxAide of Albert Lea needs help or this program will not survive. We need more volunteers to spread the workload. If we get more people to become preparers we train, TaxAide of Albert Lea will continue on.
If you would like to volunteer, please contact Senior Resources of Freeborn County at 507-377-7433.
Paul Hanson
local coordinator
TaxAide of Albert Lea