Bryan Yatsui has never had enough income to file taxes himself, yet he fills out four to five tax returns a week. Yatsui, a business administration senior with an accounting concentration, works at Cal Poly’s Volunteer Income Tax Assistance (VITA) program. VITA offers free tax help for people whose gross annual income is $49,000 or less.
“I picked VITA just because it’s basically the go-to program for the accounting concentration,” Yatsui said. “It’s just really great hands-on work if you want to get involved in tax, and it’s just great to meet a lot of the clients and the community members. It feels like I’m actually doing something rather than just writing a paper on research.”
Many accounting students use VITA as their senior project, said professor emeritus and co-founder of Cal Poly’s VITA program Jack Robison. This year, the program has 66 students.
Business administration senior Kate Transon picked VITA as her senior project. And community service played a role in her decision, Transon said.
“It’s promoted within the accounting concentration, and it’s definitely known to be something that’s fun as well as a way to do community service and give back,” Transon said.
Transon, whose education focuses on tax accounting, said this will be the first time she’s filed her own taxes.
Emily Simpson, a child development sophomore, is also filing taxes for the first time. She received her first W2 Form after working at a children’s summer camp, Simpson said. Her parents usually use the tax preparation software TurboTax, but she felt more comfortable getting face-to-face help, Simpson said.
“I figured this would probably be better for my first time than just trying to figure it out on my own,” Simpson said.
Simpson heard about VITA from a friend who received help from the program last year.
“She’s doing it again this year, so it’s probably a fine experience,” Simpson said.
Students make up approximately 25 percent of clients, according to Rusty Roy, an adjunct professor and certified public accountant who works with VITA. The people coming into VITA are representative of the population in San Luis Obispo County, he said.
“The demographics in this area are basically 70 to 79 percent white, 19 percent Latino and about 1 or 2 percent everything else,” Roy said.
Transon said the program sees a good number of students, but the majority of clients come from the community.
Local couple John and Amy Baptiste are back at VITA for the second time. John works at Sears, and Amy works as a crossing guard for public schools. The Baptistes said they used VITA at least six years ago. They came back because of their positive experience working with the students, John said.
The couple needed more help this year because they recently sold a home.
Homeowners are the most difficult clients because they have so many extra payments and deductions, such as interest or mortgages, Yatsui said. But he didn’t always know how to handle each part of the process.
To prepare, the students must take BUS 302: federal taxation for individuals, attend a night class and pass a certification test from the Internal Revenue Service (IRS).
“It’s picky and time-consuming,” Robison said of the IRS certification test. “They have to prepare five tax returns, and then use the information from the returns to finish questions.”
The students are prepared to handle basic returns, said certified public accountant and Cal Poly alumna Kathleen O’Connor. The certified public accountants do a final review of returns prepared by students, O’Connor said.
“They don’t do very many complicated things here,” O’Connor said. “Sometimes they have a schedule ‘C,’ which is if you have a business, but they’ll only do the really basic schedule ‘C’ here. Pretty much what we see here are a lot of basic W2. Sometimes they itemize, but pretty basic.”
O’Connor said she knew she wanted to be an accountant since high school. Cal Poly didn’t offer VITA when she was a business student there, but she said the interns her firm hires are better if they’ve gone through the program.
“I just think it’s a great program,” O’Connor said. “It’s good for the kids, it’s good for the people who need help.”
The reviewers haven’t made any changes to Yatsui’s returns, which he said he is proud of. Working on VITA is a good experience and has made him consider a career in taxes, he said.
“I had no intention of going into tax before this program, but I’m actually kind of liking it,” Yatsui said. “I think every single one of the clients has left smiling and happy, probably because we’re giving them a few hundred or $1,000 back.”
This article was written by Natalie De Lossa.