Taxes return for Mid-City

Most Americans dread April 15 as they turn their attention to filing their tax returns. But for a group of Tulane students, the looming deadline means an opportunity to serve people throughout the city.

“It’s nice to see the look on someone’s face when you tell them how much money the government is returning to them,” volunteer Jennifer Gatz said. “They are usually pretty excited.”

Gatz is one of over 60 students who contribute over 500 hours to the Volunteer Income Tax Assistance program to help Mid-City residents file their returns.

Neill Goslin, program manager for the Levy-Rosenblum Institute for Entrepreneurship and program director for the Central City Asset Building Coalition, first got involved four years ago in the national program.

“Tulane played an instrumental role,” he said, “primarily in supplying volunteer labor, which has been primarily students from the business school.”

While several students in the law school volunteer in a similar on-campus program, Goslin’s volunteers work off campus and help bring money back into the Mid-City district of New Orleans, which it has done with increasing success since its founding.

“The first year we did 250 tax returns and brought back a little less than $400,000,” Goslin said. “Last year, we did close to 1,200 returns and brought about $2.3 million back into the community.”

Goslin explained that these figures were based on how much each person’s refund was, as well as savings over using a paid services like H&R Block or Jackson Hewitt.

But for the students that volunteer, the program’s appeal is more than just dollars and cents.

“It is amazing to see how grateful people are after getting their taxes completed,” Kerry Gear, a senior in the A. B. Freeman School of Business who also volunteered with the program last year, said. “Some people can’t thank you enough. They continue to come back year after year and recommend this service to friends. This is proof of the program’s success.”

The program has been so successful that its economic impact is beginning to expand beyond Mid-City.

“Our target area is Central City, and we were starting to attract people from Harahan, from Harvey, from the West Bank,” Goslin said. “We never turn anybody away, but at the same time, it impedes our ability to provide the level of service we want to provide if we’re just doing as many as we can.”

Gatz, a masters of business administration student in the A. B. Freeman School of Business, enjoyed the program and appreciated the fact that it allowed her to use the skills she learned in the classroom.

“I’m involved in several volunteer organizations, but nothing that utilizes my business skills,” she said. “I thought it was a great way to apply my business and accounting skills in helping others in the local community.”

Even so, Goslin admits that it is not easy to recruit new volunteers.

“Other people in my situation have a real hard time getting volunteers, and that’s because it’s hard to get someone to say, ‘Hey, do you want to sit through a five-hour plus training on tax law?’” he said. “But it works out really well because the response we’ve gotten from Tulane students is phenomenal.”

VITA is a national program that has been run by the Internal Revenue Service for several years. Goslin and the IRS train the volunteers before they begin working on returns.

“We put them through a five-hour training program,” Goslin said. “We teach them about the tax law and we teach them about the actual software [used to file the returns], and then they’re able to do basic tax returns.”

Gear feels the time invested is well worth it.

“It is a great way to meet people in the community, both volunteers and those who use the service,” she said. “I had such a great time last year that I took the recertification exams this year and continued to work with VITA this tax season.”