Faith Works 10-30

Faith Works 10-30-10

Jeff Gill

 

VITA Could Be Vitally Important

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In the spirit of the spooky season, let me offer a few thoughts about a truly scary subject.

 

Taxes. (Boo!)

 

It may not be scripture, but we all know that nothing is certain but death and taxes.

 

The problem is that there are quite a few people here in Licking County who are certain that filing their income tax return is a fate worse than death, and more to be avoided.

 

As it turns out, that is not always true.

 

The Licking County Coalition for Housing, in their ongoing attempts to do preventive work in helping individuals and families from ending up in homelessness, has worked with the IRS in something called VITA.

 

Standing for "Volunteer Income Tax Assistance," it's a system of training for volunteers and electronic support for tax filing that is aimed at low-income working families. Those families often qualify for something called the EITC (if I didn't scare you with the "Boo," how about a frightening mass of acronyms?), which is the "Earned Income Tax Credit."

 

Last year, almost 500 returns were filed around Licking County through VITA work, leading not to payment of additional taxes, but actually bringing back home nearly $700,000. About a third of that were EITC payments that working families had earned, but were unsure how to claim; two thirds of it was withholding that was rightfully that person's earnings.

 

Without VITA, that's hundreds of thousands of dollars that were brought back to Licking County and largely spent here, that otherwise would never have "come home."

 

And the median household income of VITA filers? Around $14,000.

 

What the Housing Coalition folks are concerned about is that most of the planning and coordination of this was done through the IRS by AmeriCorps members, and that program has been one of the casualties of the still struggling economy. Some volunteers were crucial to making VITA work in the last couple of years, but the program will need to be essentially ALL volunteer to move forward again.

 

The staff at LCCH – www.lcchousing.org -- have told me as their board president, and other community leaders, that they are willing to make some extremely generous over-and-above efforts to keep VITA going: it's that important to reducing the number of households running the risk of homelessness. They really want to do this in 2011.

 

What they will need over the next few weeks is a body of volunteers who can commit to a) some 16 hours of training to be "certified" as a volunteer tax aide, and b) at least four hours a week from mid-January through (of course) mid-April. The training is probably going to be set for two Saturdays, and the sites will be at the LCCH offices in downtown Newark, Opportunity Links on East Main, the OSU-N/COTC campus, and ideally (if there's enough volunteers) some other sites.

 

This is a wonderful way you can directly help working poor families, the county as a whole, and be a friendly, caring presence to people who often wonder if anyone out there care about their struggles. I immediately thought of the faith communities of Licking County as this need was described.

 

If you, members of your Bible study group, outreach committee, women's fellowship, men's breakfast crew, whosoever will, are interested in getting this training (and the very complete legal protection it offers the volunteer preparers), and doing the work, call 345-1970. Let them know at LCCH that you are interested in VITA, and I can guarantee you'll hear back soon from them.

 

Your offer of time and interest could be the difference between 50 returns done in Licking County, and 500; between nearly a million dollars to this county that belongs here in our economy, or next to nothing back; between a working hourly head of household convinced that they are alone, and that person finding a smiling face that helps them earn back what they'd already worked hard for to start with.

 

Call 345-1970. I truly pray that you will.

 

Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and supply preacher around central Ohio; contact him at knapsack77@gmail.com or follow Knapsack @Twitter.