Free tax prep, filing for qualified residents

The IRS isn’t going to let you get out of paying taxes.

But if you qualify, the United Way has a legion of volunteers certified by the IRS who can prepare and file your taxes for free.

If you generally earn less than $50,000 yearly, are elderly, disabled or non-English speaking and have an individual or joint return, the Volunteer Income Tax Assistance program is here to crunch the numbers.

Five tax preparers are working at the Maricopa Public Library Fridays and Saturdays through April 14. One volunteer will prepare a client’s return and another will check it over for accuracy before it is sent.

Viola Najar, coordinator volunteer and preparer, said while online tax preparation programs can be easy for people with no tax experience, the programs only ask questions as the individual provides information, while with her program, the trained volunteers are actually preparing returns on IRS forms, which have all the questions and not just some of them.

“There’s a lot you need to know ahead of time if you are going on an online program,” she said.

Najar first did taxes as a part-time job while working full time as a social worker for Orange County, Calif.

When she moved to Maricopa in 2007 to retire, she wanted to stay in the tax game, took a class to update her skills, but found it difficult to get her own business off the ground.

She now works as a professional preparer for Master Tax Advisors and signed up to become a Volunteer Income Tax Assistance volunteer in July.

The training was about 10 weeks, she said, with weekly classes and computer-based exercises and tests. To become certified, volunteers must pass the final test with 80 percent accuracy.

“I enjoyed doing taxes and wanted to volunteer to do it for people who qualified,” she said.

This is the third year Providence residents Dan and Donna Brower had their joint return prepared by the assistance program.

“It is convenient and they are very knowledgeable,” Dan said. “They’ve got everything you need to get it done.”

Volunteer Susan Deck, who joined VITA in November, said she’s new to personal taxes though she did financial work for the city of Mesa before she retired.

“This is my first year so I’m a rookie,” she said. “I thought this would be a good way to give back to the community. I love it,” she said.

Deck said the volunteers have diverse backgrounds, so if one preparer doesn’t know the answer to a question, another one likely will.