Students Find Volunteer Tax Work Rewarding, Not Taxing

Wed., Apr 16, 2008
“Working as a VITA (Volunteer Income Tax Assistance) volunteer has been a terrific learning experience. It’s given us an opportunity to make decisions on our feet, to work as a team, and to interact with a wide variety of people,” observes accounting student Peter Suchcicki ’08. Peter is one of two senior-year student administrators of the eight-week tax return assistance program. A partnership between the Isenberg School’s department of accounting and the IRS, VITA mobilizes eighty students, who prepare and file federal and state tax returns for two categories of clients—lower-income residents of the Greater Amherst community and foreign national students at UMass Amherst and its Five College partners.

“Last year, 80 Isenberg School accounting students prepared 2,000 to 3,000 returns for 1,100 clients, who met with us right here in the Isenberg School,” notes the program’s faculty director, Catherine West. “This year is every bit as busy,” continues West, who is a CPA and lecturer in the school’s undergraduate accounting and master’s degree programs. Three nights a week during tax season, West, retired UMass administrator Ted Los (who supervises returns for foreign students), and 10 to 12 accounting students wield use lap-top computers in electronically processing and filing 25 returns for their clients, who flock to the free service on a first-come-first-served basis.

“The IRS tells us that we have one of the lowest error rates among VITA programs in the nation, especially considering our high volume,” emphasizes West. “We’ve had no significant errors during this year and last.” West attributes that to a system of checks and cross-checks that insure both quality and quantity control. After arriving in the classroom where VITA operates, a client will interact with a pair of students who check one another’s work as they record and interpret the client’s tax information. The students probe for factors like education credits, new dependents, and medical expenses that can change a client’s financial status and tax return. “People are often surprised if we tell them that their status has changed—that they have moved up or down a bracket,” observes Samantha Demty ‘08, the program’s other senior student administrator.

When the students have completed their work-up, the client brings a printout to the front of the room to Suchcicki and Demty, who recheck the copy and ask the client additional questions. After that, West examines and signs off on each return before it is filed electronically by the end of the session. “The process catches virtually every error by the time we file a return, but there is a learning curve for the students,” remarks Demty. “As we move closer to April 15th , Cathy finds fewer and fewer errors when she examines the returns.”

“We owe much of our success to [Professor] Mike Whiteman and his course in federal taxation, which all students who participate in VITA must complete,” adds West. “Mike ran the VITA program from 1997 until three years ago, when I took over.”

“Professor Whiteman pitched VITA to us in almost every class,” recalls Suchcicki. “His own colorful stories about his experiences as a tax lawyer convinced many of us that tax work could be challenging, rewarding, and fun. For me, VITA has also conferred two other positives—seeing the outcome of my own concrete work and serving the community. It doesn’t get much better than that.”


Pictured above: Senior-year VITA student administrators Peter Suchcicki and Samantha Demty; and junior-year student administrators Carolyn Warger and Chris Rizza.