Volunteers sought to expand successful tax help program | Milwaukee Neighborhood News Service
Social Development Commission
June 22, 2013
A free program that helped thousands of Milwaukee County residents with their state and federal taxes is looking for help. The Volunteer Income Tax Assistance (VITA) program of the Milwaukee Asset Building Coalition and the Social Development Commission (SDC) is recruiting volunteers.
The VITA program filed in this spring’s tax season more than 15,400 tax returns that brought back more than $14.6-million in tax refunds and credits to local residents.  The program also helped filers set up more than 300 traditional bank accounts.
Three SDC sites for the Milwaukee County VITA program were rated as being in the top five sites in the State of Wisconsin for production:  the site at SDC Richards Street was rated by the local IRS office as the 2 highest producing facility in the state, SDC Chase Street was pegged at 3 and SDC Teutonia Avenue was 5.
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46 volunteers assisted in making the past VITA tax season a success and more are needed to help expand the effort in the coming tax season.  Tax preparers, greeters and others will help the program serve even more residents at more locations.  Training and certification will begin in December of this year with the actual tax preparation work starting in January of 2014.
Persons, businesses and organizations interested in providing volunteers for the VITA tax training should contact LaToya Jones at 414-906-2823 or by email at ljones@cr-sdc.org.  For more information on the VITA program, go to www.cr-sdc.org/index/Programs–Services/VITA.htm on the SDC website.