During tax season, professor Dave Knutsen and his students helped almost 400 taxpayers file for free through the Volunteer Income Tax Assistance (VITA) program.
For the first time on-site at Roosevelt University, Knutsen and seven accounting students managed the flood of paperwork to help their customers get their full refunds.
For over 50 years, the Internal Revenue Service has offered free tax help through the VITA program. The program mobilizes certified tax preparers to help people with disabilities, limited English fluency or annual incomes less than $57,000.
The program is an opportunity to help local Chicagoans save on tax preparation and get their maximum refunds. Knutsen remembers going through one customer’s documents to discover that they had overpaid by $3,000; the professor was able to call them and help them file an amended return to get their money back.
“As stressful as it is, I look forward to helping people,” Knutsen said.
Beyond an opportunity to give back, the Roosevelt VITA program helps accounting students get real experience in tax preparation. All of the volunteers were IRS certified as tax preparers as part of Knutsen’s undergraduate course. The experience is one that students can add to their resume before graduation.
Explore the Roosevelt accounting program.
Dave Knutsen joined the Roosevelt faculty during the integration with Robert Morris University Illinois. In past tax seasons, he had administrated the VITA site at the RMUI campus, helping taxpayers from all walks of life file their returns.
In their first year of hosting the program at the Chicago Campus, the group had to swiftly adapt to the safety demands of the pandemic. The group took over the admissions office space while the counselors were working remotely and set up socially distanced appointment times. Once a week for more than two months, Knutsen and the students welcomed taxpayers in to drop off their forms and come back for the completed returns.
Knutsen had been leading a VITA site for years, but he said this year’s clients seemed especially grateful.
The year 2020 was a complicated one for taxes, as people dealt with missing stimulus checks or taxes on unemployment dollars. Due to pandemic restraints, many VITA sites had to close or operate at partial capacity.
“More than ever, we got so many thank yous from individuals,” Knutsen said. “They told us they would have fallen through the cracks and they wouldn't have gotten the stimulus money without our help.”
