by Katie Allen (Traveler Staff Reporter)
Students received free tax assistance from the UofA this past week.
This is the first year the UofA has provided free tax assistance for any students or faculty at the Wellness Center on campus, according to the UA Division of Student Affairs.
Center for Community Engagement, the Northwest Arkansas United Way, CARE Community Center and the accounting, finance and information systems Registered Student Organization, Beta Alpha Psi, was responsible for providing those services.
Chen, a sophomore student at UA, was introduced to these services through Facebook, he said.
“This helped a lot. I’m going to recommend this to my brothers,” Chen said.
Chen is from Kazakhstan, a country located in central Asia, and has never used tax assistance before but since the process was so easy, he would definitely do it again next spring, he said.
Through collaboration with United Way NWA, Center for Community Engagement and CARE Community Center, the UofA had volunteers to help students or faculty with the Volunteer Income Tax Assistance program, according to the UA Division of Student Affairs.
“The only things that are forever are death and taxes,” said Nathan Whisenant, one of the lead volunteers for the Center for Community Engagement.
Whisenant has been volunteering for eight years to help college students at various campuses and a variety of nonprofits, he said.
Over a couple hundred students get free help through these services every year, Whisenant said.
The number of students or faculty who use the services this year will determine if this free opportunity returns next spring, said Jackson Braswell, communications manager at the United Way in NWA.
“The more impactful this becomes and the more that it serves the people in the community, the more well-known it will be. I think (the UofA) is a perfect resource. Maybe the UofA can be the guinea pig,” Braswell said.
Students needed a valid photo ID, a hard copy of their Social Security card, any relevant employment documents, any wage or earning statements and their bank routing and account numbers.
More than ten students completed the entire process. The volunteers said they had several students sign up, but most of them did not have their proper documentation with them, Whisenant said.
The IRS mandates that the volunteers see physical proof of each person’s Social Security card to avoid identity theft, Whisenant said.
If students showed up without the proper documentation, the volunteers asked them to come back with everything before the free event was over, Whisenant said.
4,700 individuals and families in Northwest Arkansas filed their taxes through the United Way Free Tax Service Initiative in 2018, according to United Way NWA.
NWA residents that participated in this free program saved more than $826,000 in tax filing fees that would have originally gone to either a CPA, TurboTax or any other online tax return, which take service fees out of tax returns, resulting in a total of $6.1 million economic impact, according to United Way NWA online statements.
Any students may become volunteers by applying to the Center for Community Engagement website.