To help alleviate the stresses of tax season, multiple local agencies have partnered to provide Volunteer Income Tax Assistance (VITA) services to low-income people living in the Santa Maria area.
Offered by Allan Hancock College and United Way of Santa Barbara County for the second year in a row, VITA is an IRS-sanctioned, free-of-charge program that helps people complete and file tax forms and claim Earned Income and Child Tax Credit allowances.
This year, the program has expanded to include accounting students and faculty members from Cal Poly Orfalea College of Business in San Luis Obispo. Organizers are planning to increase the number of federal and state taxes filed from the Santa Maria site from 300 in 2008 to 800 in 2009.
“It’s all coming back full circle,” said Santa Maria City Councilmember Hilda Zacarias, who helped establish VITA.
Zacarias’ involvement with the program began in the 1990s when the Cal Poly graduate started an income tax assistance site in the Santa Maria Town Center. After six years, the program had to shut down, and it wasn’t offered again in Santa Maria until last year.
The United Way’s Family Financial Stability Education and Training Program is also offering banking services through Santa Barbara Bank and Trust and home foreclosure and lending services through Cabrillo Economic Development Corporation. Participants can get access to children’s health insurance through the Children’s Health Initiative Santa Barbara and citizenship and language classes through Allan Hancock College. All of these services are being offered in multiple languages, primarily English and Spanish.
“I’ve never seen a program like this before,” Allan Hancock College student Jeannie Bulgin said through an interpreter during a VITA session on March 7.
Bulgin, who is legally deaf, was told about the program by the California Department of Rehabilitation, which supplied her with a sign language interpreter. She said she’d have to go through an extensive process to get an interpreter in the past.
“I’d have to bug them forever, and then they’d either refuse to get one or expect me to pay for it, which I couldn’t afford,” she said.
The free income tax assistance and interpreter services, she said, have made life a lot easier for her, financially.
VITA services are being offered every Saturday through April 4 from 9 a.m. to 1 p.m. at Allan Hancock College’s Community Education Center, 800 S. College Dr., building S, in Santa Maria.
For more information about VITA and other services, call 211 or Allan Hancock College’s Community Education at 922-6966, Ext. 3209.
This article appears in Mar 19-26, 2009.