Link and Learn Taxes for 2009 (2008 Tax Year) Now Available

The Link and Learn for 2009 (Tax Year 2008) just became available. Check out http://www.vita-volunteers.org !

Santa Clara County VITA Training Schedule

The VITA training schedule for the Santa Clara County for the 2008 Tax Year is now coming up. More information on vita-volunteers.org

Possible Second Chance if you did not get tax rebate in 2008

There is a possible second chance to apply for the tax rebate during 2009 if for one reason or another, you did not get it in 2008. More information will be provided as collected.

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TaxSpeak gives different meanings to words in PeopleSpeak

TaxSpeak refers to the language and meaning of words used by employees of the taxing authorities which differ from PeopleSpeak (Regular American English in everyday usage). TaxSpeak is so similar and yet so different from PeopleSpeak that it confuses even those whose first language is English. Most people practice PeopleSpeak for everyday communication with a dictionary for clarification, whereas TaxSpeak clarification requires reading though 1040 instructions, Pub 17, or calling the toll-free 1-800-829-1040 where the helpful customer service agent will patiently search for and read out the relevant sections from these publications. ...more...

Link and Learn Taxes for 2009 (2008 Tax Year) Not yet available

Update: It is available as of 11/07/2008!! See http://vita-volunteers.blogspot.com/2008/11/link-and-learn-taxes-for-2009-2008-tax.html

The Link and Learn for 2009 (Tax Year 2008) is not yet available. Estimated times for when they are available in the past have been incorrect and led to disappointment on the part of students.

http://www.vita-volunteers.org/ has a link to the currently available course for 2008 (for 2007 Tax Year) which you may want to check out. However, if you go through it now, please note that certification is not valid for the 2008 Tax Year.

Related Vita Volunteers Sites

Vita Volunteers 2008-2009 Website


Vita Volunteers Announcements Blog

• General announcements related to volunteering for VITA

Vita Volunteers Upcoming Events Blog

• Upcoming Events related to VITA and Tax Preparation activities

Vita Volunteers Coordinators Blog

• Hints and comments from and for coordinators

Vita Volunteers Questions and Answers Blog

• Questions and answers that are received by vita-volunteers.org

On Line Sign-ups for VITA volunteers now being taken

Online sign-ups are now being taken at http://www.vita-volunteers.org

If you are interested in volunteering in Santa Clara County, please sign up through the appropriate link on the home page so the information is forwarded to the IRS Coordinator for Santa Clara County.

Enquiries and signups for all other counties are forwarded to the national VITA headquarters from which they are routed to the appropriate places.

Interpreting IRS Acknowledgement Report

Thanks to James Kinsey of the IRS who provided these interpretations of the IRS Acknowledgement Report.

More on Economic Stimulus Act of 2008

The text of the Economic Stimulus Act of 2008 is available here.

The term "Net Tax Liability" appears to have a different definition when used in the context of the Economic Stimulus Act of 2008 from when it is used in other situations.

How to determine Low-Income Tax Returns?

IRS Tax Attorney - www.irstaxattorney.com - Presented by Alvin Brown and Associates

After getting conflicting information on how much income is low-income for VITA purposes, it is enlightening to note that there is a definition proposed to congress to define what is the definition of a program assisting low-income taxpayers.

"(B) Assistance to low-income taxpayers. --For purposes of subparagraph (A), a
program is treated as assisting low-income taxpayers if at least 90 percent of
the taxpayers assisted by the program have incomes which do not exceed 250
percent of the poverty level, as determined in accordance with criteria
established by the Director of the Office of Management and Budget."

It does suggest that in order to meet the goals of the program, VITA as a whole, and possibly within individual sites, should ensure that at least 90% of the taxpayers they assist should have incomes below some level. Another way to look at it is to count how many returns have AGIs that do not exceed 250 percent of poverty level, and make sure that these make up at least more than 90% of the returns.

The poverty level definition changes from year to year, but the official word from the Department of Health and Human services for the years 2007 - 2008 is

We can see that 250% of Income Level depends on Filing Status and number of dependents, and for 2008 for a Single the limit would be $26,000, for MFJ the limit would be $35,000 and for a family of four it would be $53,000.

How, When and How Much Tax Rebate will I get?

The Economic Stimulus Tax Rebates will start trasmitting on May 2, 2008 for direct deposit, and on May 16, 2008 for paper checks. The schedule is given for 2007 Income Tax Returns filed on or before April 15, 2008

Where to find information on becoming a VITA Volunteer?

There are different ways to offer your services as a VITA volunteer. The IRS's main toll-free number 1-800-829-1040 offers help and may direct you to the right person. In many parts of the U.S., organizations at state, county or city programs recruit and train the volunteers, usually with the help and blessing of the IRS and the State Income Tax Authorities.

To avoid hunting for information on the telephone, one good way is to look for web sites using your favorite search engine. Doing so provides an abundance of riches.

Another alternative is to visit http://www.vita-volunteers.org. There is is possible to sign yourself up with a Yahoo!Group that periodically sends out announcements about when training starts so that you may be reminded when to officially register. Since the group is an announcement only group that only asks for an email address that you check periodically, there is little worry about being spammed by signing up for the group since it is managed by a respected well-known company. The site also has a custom search engine on the front page which draws on a smaller set of websites for its information, and provides a less abundant set of riches.

Who is this site for?

The original audience for the website was a small group of active VITA volunteers in Santa Clara County. Set up originally to act as an announcement page from the IRS VITA Coordinator, its scope expanded to taking online registrations of interested volunteers and site preferences, and emailing the information to the IRS VITA Coordinator.

Since there was a registration page, potential volunteers from all over the United States registered to get more information about the program, contact information, etc which was not available to the webmaster. So a separate page was set up for non-Santa Clara County volunteers, and enquiries forwarded to the IRS. Visitor traffic to the site increased, and the cities from which volunteers signed up is shown on the home page of the site.


The information turned out also to be relevant t0 visitors not interested in volunteering, but in using the services provided by the volunteers. Others had simple questions and requests for forms, all of which the webmaster could not answer individually, so the vita-information Yahoo!Group was set up as an announcement group to which people could subscribe.

On VITA and Volunteers

From the website http://www.vita-volunteers.org/ .....

"Volunteer Income Tax Assistance (VITA) volunteers provide FREE Income Tax Preparation Assistance to low-Income, elderly, disabled and limited English speaking people. Volunteers get FREE training and certification by the IRS"......

Training in Tax Law relevant to the clients who are served by VITA sites is provided in classrooms and online. There is abundant reference material provided that it is possible to self-study, but it is generally helpful in understanding and absorbing the material in the classroom because of the discussion and exchange of ideas. The end goal of the training is to pass an untimed open book exam based on the training material. The exam can be taken online through the web, or in the classroom where the test is included as part of training material. If a passing grade is not achieved the first time, there is the opportunity to take a retest. It is not clear how to get certified if a volunteer does not get the passing grade. However, with a little bit of thought and some resourcefulness, the determined volunteer can generally get certified quite easily even after not making it in two attempts.

Handling Tax Stimulus Returns in TaxWise

March 12, 2008

When the issue of TaxWise rejecting 2007 Income Tax Returns for the purpose of the Economic Stimulus Package came up, IRS Relationship Manager emailed all coodinators in Santa Clara County on Feb 19, 2008 that VITA HQ was studying the problem of what to do when Tax Wise returned an error for $0 AGI returns.


On Feb 27, 2008 an mail indicated that VITA HQ "has NOT endorsed the creation of phantom income ($1 interest income for instance) in order to force tax wise E-file. Paper filing is the recommended option." We were also advised to "Please do stay clear of advising the taxpayer on any kind of computation in terms of how much they will receive. Let the May 2008 notices take care of this.'


On Mar 3, 2008, the IRS sent out the following advisory "RP-2008-21 provides that the Internal Revenue Service will not challenge the accuracy of income tax returns filed in compliance with Notice 2008-28 by eligible individuals who enter $1.00 in adjusted gross income solely for purposes of effectuating the electronic filing of the return. This document will be published in IRB 2008-12, March 10, 2008"

In various reports in the media, and the IRS website, this appears to have been confirmed. It is allowed to do the $1.00 return without fear of the IRS rejecting the return if all other items are correct. It also appears to suggest that entering data into other boxes to meet qualifying income requirments may not meet the scrutiny that is otherwise in place.


So what to do? Guess it means that a place needs to be found to put in that $1 of bogus non-existent qualifying income to generate that $1 in AGI income. Should it be under wage income, unearned income, interest income or misc income?

Handling $0 AGI TaxWise rejects

When the issue of TaxWise rejecting 2007 Income Tax Returns for the purpose of the Economic Stimulus Package came up, IRS Relationship Manager emailed all coodinators in Santa Clara County on Feb 19, 2008 that VITA HQ was studying the problem of what to do when Tax Wise returned an error for $0 AGI returns.

On Feb 27, 2008 an mail indicated that VITA HQ "has NOT endorsed the creation of phantom income ($1 interest income for instance) in order to force tax wise E-file. Paper filing is the recommended option." We were also advised to "Please do stay clear of advising the taxpayer on any kind of computation in terms of how much they will receive. Let the May 2008 notices take care of this.'

On Mar 3, 2008, the IRS sent out the following advisory "RP-2008-21 provides that the Internal Revenue Service will not challenge the accuracy of income tax returns filed in compliance with Notice 2008-28 by eligible individuals who enter $1.00 in adjusted gross income solely for purposes of effectuating the electronic filing of the return. This document will be published in IRB 2008-12, March 10, 2008"

So what to do? Guess it means that a place needs to be found to put in that $1 of bogus non-existent taxable income to generate that $1 in AGI income. Should it be under wage income, unearned income, interest income or misc income?

Create those E-files early!

Feb 28 2008 Why creating those E-files early will simply life for you!


Creating the e-file before printing out the 8879s is helpful because that way the DCNs will appear on the 8879 rather than you filling it in by hand later in the tiny space available for it. However, you will need to assure your volunteers that it would not be the end of the world if the taxpayer changes his or her mind about e-filing with you. This fear of accidentally sending the e-file to the IRS seems to have its origin in the TaxWise training with undue emphasis on the importance of filling accurate e-files. Volunteers need to be given the confidence and the requirement to create an e-file even if it has to be changed later, so that you as the transmitter can be sure that at some point the return was ready for filing, and it will also help the volunteer get rid of some of those errors. The reality is that e-files need to be proactively sent rather than be sent automatically. The ironic part is that the login requirements for transmitting and accepting acknowledgements is much less stringent than for logging in to the TaxWise support website or TaxWise University.

State Returns after Federal returns and IT saavy volunteers

http://www.vita-volunteers.org/survival_guide_more.htm

Feb 27 2008. Read why it makes sense to file the State returns after the Federal returns are accepted, and how motivated IT Savvy Volunteers can help improve your operations.

Highlights of Economic Stimulus Act

http://www.vita-volunteers.org/Economic_Stimulus_%20Payments(Rebates).htm
Feb 20 2008: Highlights on information of the Economic Stimulus Act and the requirement that taxpayers need to file 2007 returns in order to qualify for rebates ranging from $300-$600 per taxpayer.

Launch of VITA Volunteer Site Coordinators Feed

Feb 24 2008: Purpose of this feed is to publish tips and tricks that help the survival of VITA Site Coordinators. Content comes from observing what happens in the trenches of vounteer VITA sites rather than from the rarefied atmospheres in the upper reaches of the ivory towers of the organization. As such the content is of a practical nature on what is successful to get the work done, keeping in mind that the ideal is to have excellent quality of output for the site.

Tips come from Site Coordinators. If there is a tip, trick or comment you would like to share, this is a perfect way to share it among the other VITA Coordinators facing similar problems.

While it says Coordinators, it is expected to include information for the Efile Transmitters using TaxWise as well.

IRS Link and Learn Income Taxes now available

Obtain the URLs to find out how to train online to prepare taxes and get certfied by the IRS

Please note that this was posted in February 2008.  If you happen to get here because you are looking for the current Link and Learn Income Tax, please go to http://www.vita-volunteers.org/ or to a more recent posting on this blog at

http://vita-volunteers.blogspot.com/2008/10/link-and-learn-taxes-for-2009-2008-tax.html