American Taxation Association

Hinson, an associate professor of accountancy who came to Wake Forest in 1997 from the University of Tennessee and Arthur Anderson, came up with the idea to have students help file returns after a graduate student submitted a project on the availability of tax assistance for those with low incomes. Now she says the dual purpose undertaking has become her personal passion. “The project puts money back into the hands of lower-income people in Forsyth County, and students gain experience preparing tax returns and serving the community,” she says.

The idea took off in 2000, when the IRS paired Hinson with human resources planner Kay Albright, from the Forsyth County Department of Social Services, to develop a Voluntary Income Tax Assistance (VITA) program. Albright and Hinson next teamed up with many other community partners to form the Forsyth Working Families Partnership. The partnership, now housed at the Experiment in Self-Reliance, has three primary goals: education around the earned income tax credit, free income tax preparation service, and the promotion of financial literacy.
 “An IRS commissioned study found that, in many communities, people who could most benefit from it, were not using the fully-refundable earned income tax credit,” explains Hinson. “At that time, seven to eight million dollars in Forsyth County alone went unclaimed every year. That estimate is now as high as ten million dollars per year.”

Albright says social services recognized, however, that simply making clients aware of the earned income tax credit was ineffective. For low-income individuals and families to receive the most from their refund, a convenient way to file had to be made available. Otherwise, people would continue to use expensive tax preparation services to claim it.

“Those who did know about the credit were sometimes paying $200-$400 for simple tax returns and getting involved in refund anticipations loans, which are between $300-$500 percent interest. The people who could least afford it were really getting ripped off,” Hinson adds.

“The IRS offered our department training and materials,” says Albright. They were very helpful and very thorough, but it was Yvonne who helped us overcome our original concerns by focusing training on the essentials and explaining how the IRS software could be used to best serve our clients. She increased our confidence.”

Students involved in the program file tax returns at VITA sites, such as local libraries, Goodwill Industries, and other easily accessible locations, along with social services employees and community volunteers. Students are prepared to look for any available tax breaks to increase refunds—especially the often unclaimed earned income tax credit.

A check for $2,000 might mean a new television, a vacation, or a windfall used to pay off the credit card for those more affluent. But for people struggling just above the poverty level, these funds can amount to several months pay and the difference between having a car that runs and one that doesn’t.

“Before volunteering at the VITA sites, I doubt that Yvonne’s students realized how much a tax refund really matters to low-income families. Most students on our campus, or at any private, liberal arts college, don’t know what it means to live at the median household income. They understand that they are going to help someone who makes less than $18,000 a year get earned income credit and $2,000 back on their taxes, but what they don’t understand is what it means to live on $18,000 a year. They have no idea what a difference $2,000 makes to a household living only slightly above the poverty line,” says Angela Hattery, an associate professor of sociology at Wake Forest.

“The students were applying classroom knowledge, but I felt ill prepared to handle the sociological impact of the service on the students. We have a lot of people who come to our VITA sites who don’t come close to our income guidelines. Students are seeing people and families living off  less than many students have in spending money. They’re getting tax experience, but the most important thing they’re gaining is exposure,” Hinson explains.

Maureen Lyon, a senior accountancy major from Newburgh, New York, was nervous the first few times she volunteered. Lyon spent approximately twenty hours during tax season filing electronic returns at the Central Library.
“When I finished one woman’s return and told her what her refund would be, she gasped and practically fell on the table. She grabbed my arm and said she needed a minute to catch her breath. It was such a good feeling to know that the program really helps people in the community and a great feeling to be a part of it.”

“I filed a return for a woman who attempted to file the return herself  but gave up,” says Brent Banks, a junior accountancy major from East Williston, New York.  “She showed me the work she had done. She had neglected to list her children as dependents and missed a number of education and child care credits. She left the site with a very significant refund and was nearly moved to tears. She gave me a hug and left with a smile on her face. I can’t say how good that made me feel.”

 “I’m a big believer in hands-on experience,” says Hinson. “It’s easier to understand what you’re learning if you can actually apply it. It was only after the program developed that I realized I was involved in something that had a name—something called ‘service learning.’”

The ACE Fellows Service-Learning Program at Wake Forest is designed to link the University’s commitment to academic excellence with service to the community. It provides opportunities and incentives for faculty to explore and implement service-learning into existing courses.

Hinson applied for and was awarded a Jesse Bell duPont grant in 2004 and received money for  marketing and training courses to support the VITA program. The grant funded an adjunct professor to teach Hinson’s classes so she could focus on the service-learning aspect of her course and help implement the Forsyth Working Families Partnership goals throughout the community.
“It allowed me to promote the VITA program in part by training volunteers. The grant also gave us over $20,000 for marketing. We placed Spanish/English marketing adds on the outside of a quarter of the buses and on the inside of all the buses in Forsyth County. We developed free spots for our community television network, and  produced flyers and paycheck stuffers in English and Spanish for employers who would let us come and talk to employees.”
Service-learning increases Wake Forest’s visibility and unites the University with the local residents in a tangible way. “When I’m working to serve the community, I’m never just Yvonne Hinson. I’m Yvonne Hinson from Wake Forest University.”
For students, the learning part of the service-learning work included gaining confidence by successfully completing the returns.

“Before going to volunteer, I was pretty intimidated by the whole process,” says senior finance major Lauren Mikan from Alpharetta, Georgia.  “I was concerned that the returns would be very complex or that I would have trouble getting help. But it turned out the returns I did were simple, and the experience was a lot less stressful than I expected.”

“It’s one thing to read the books and do the homework,” says Lyon, “but just getting practical, hands-on experience is very beneficial. It makes what we read more meaningful.”

“I was somewhat nervous,” says Banks. I was worried I would make a mistake on someone’s return that would have devastating consequences. But, after completing my first tax return, I was totally comfortable with the process. I was really surprised how much I enjoyed it.”

The overriding concern that mistakes could be made seems unfounded, since, as the IRS told Albright, VITA volunteers in the Forsyth community do just as good a job as paid preparers—sometimes better.

For Hinson, however, the tax preparation experience is the secondary component of the program. “I’m hopeful that my students won’t just gain tax experience, but that the work they do will have an impact on their lives. My experiences working with VITA have really changed my life. My little service-learning project has turned my world upside down.”

By all accounts, Hinson’s project has been a success. This year she did not require students to volunteer at the VITA sites, but rather, made the opportunity available and provided training and support for those who participated. Even though it wasn’t a required part of the class, one-third of her tax and accounting students opted to take part in VITA .

“What’s innovative is how Yvonne connects service-learning to her discipline,” explains Hattery. “Because of the tight curriculum in the Calloway school, her class might be the one experience they have of service-learning and of getting out in the community. The power of what Yvonne does is to show students how to use their skills to bring about social change. She gives them an opportunity to transform people’s lives.”