COB Students Volunteered Tax Assistance

(St. Petersburg, Fla.) April 29, 2009 – Twenty students from the College of Business at USF St. Petersburg, including five interns, took their accounting know-how to the community through the IRS Voluntary Income Tax Assistance [VITA] program, a free tax-help service for low- to moderate-income families.

Both the volunteers and interns, all undergraduate students except for one MBA student, underwent more than 30 hours of training to provide assistance on tax filings, including special credits, such as the Earned Income Tax Credit and Child Tax Credit. In addition to free tax return preparation assistance, most sites where the volunteers worked offered free electronic filing. Tax assistance sites were available throughout Pinellas County and thousands have been helped by the VITA program.

"For the student volunteers, this is not a required element of any course," said James Fellows, PhD, professor of accounting. "The IRS wants people who really want to do this. We get highly motivated people that way. And this certainly includes the student interns, who must do 70 hours of tax preparation after their IRS training."

Most of the student volunteers and interns completed Concepts of Federal Taxation, the introductory tax class at USF St. Petersburg. The students receive certification from the IRS as tax preparers. Those who took the course for credit as an internship received three-hour course credit from USFSP. The students, along with other VITA volunteers in Pinellas County, were honored at an April 24 luncheon at the Museum of Fine Arts in St. Petersburg.

Fellows, who teaches tax classes at USFSP, coordinates the students’ involvement with the IRS, along with Barb Higel, coordinator for internship programs for the USFSP College of Business. Fellows has been a faculty member at USF St. Petersburg since 1992 and was named the 2005 Educator of the Year by the Florida Institute of Public Accountants.

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