It’s about time to update the old blog here. I have been extremely remiss for the past 5 and a half months. Well, I was working. As a Local Coordinator for the AARP Tax-Aide program, I was hired by a local Non-Profit to run their tax preparation effort. We call the program the Southwest Tax Coalition. It includes participation by AARP/TaxAide, Community Action Agency of Southern New Mexico, United Way and Dona Ana Community College. I started working for them in the middle of November, and the tax season ended last week. During that time I bought new hardware for the effort, recruited and trained volunteers, set up the site and then worked every day from Feb 2 through April 15. I had fun doing it, and I feel like we really accomplished something for the city and county.
A few statistics for you… During the 10 weeks we were open, we saw almost 5000 clients. We prepared almost 3500 federal tax returns and 97% of those included a state return. In New Mexico, low income residents can qualify for up to $300 in income tax rebates and low income seniors can qualify for an additional $250 in property tax rebates. So, we also prepared almost 1500 State-Only returns. We helped our clients claim over $2.5 million in Federal tax refunds including just over $1 million in the Earned Income Tax Credit. State returns filed with Federal returns added another $500,000 to the total. I don’t have a way to tell exactly how much we claimed on our state-only returns, but $200,000 is a reasonable assumption. And, at an average of $150 per return, we also helped our clients save half a million dollars in tax preparation fees.
I’ve been doing this for 5 years now, and every year the program has grown. This year we had 50 volunteers, and 20 students from the college helping prepare these taxes. CAA also contributed 4 part-time employees to help the effort. All together it is a tremendous program, and I am proud of our accomplishments. CAA also provides tax service during the year. Starting in May, and running until November, we will be preparing returns for 2006, 2007 and 2008, as well as amended returns for those years. I plan to work maybe one day a week on this effort. There are 2 other volunteers who will be participating also.
