{"id":8708,"date":"2020-03-09T19:45:54","date_gmt":"2020-03-09T19:45:54","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/2022\/01\/06\/relieving-the-tax-burden\/"},"modified":"2022-09-07T15:32:30","modified_gmt":"2022-09-07T19:32:30","slug":"relieving-the-tax-burden","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/relieving-the-tax-burden\/","title":{"rendered":"Relieving the tax burden"},"content":{"rendered":"

Sydney Tanner \u201920 looks forward to the time of year most people dread \u2013 tax season. For the third year in a row, Tanner is volunteering with Volunteer Income Tax Assistance (VITA), a free tax service administered by the United Way for individuals and families who make $60,000 or less annually.<\/p>\n

The first two years, her participation was required as part of intermediate financial accounting and advanced accounting, taught by Sandy Roberson, professor of business and accounting.<\/p>\n

This year, Tanner says she\u2019s doing it because \u201cI enjoy giving back to the community.\u201d<\/p>\n

And for some clients, the service represents more than a nice gesture; it\u2019s empowering. Tanner remembers a client who was clearly frustrated in her failed attempt to file her own tax return.<\/p>\n

\u201cUnderstandably, she showed up at the VITA site very annoyed,\u201d Tanner said. \u201cBut by the end of the visit, she was smiling and full of energy. We were able to correct the error and let her know what was wrong, giving her the tools to prepare her own return the following year. For me, it was satisfying to see the taxpayer feel empowered to take that on.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"Portrait<\/a>

Sydney Tanner ’20 has volunteered with the VITA program through the United Way for three years. “I enjoy giving back to the community,” she said.<\/p><\/div>\n

Many other Upstate individuals and families have no doubt encountered similar experiences. Since Furman first began supplying VITA volunteers in 2009, 360 students have participated, donating more than 5,200 hours through 2019, Roberson said.<\/p>\n

To become certified by the Internal Revenue Service, students must grind out scores of practice returns and complete in-class and supplemental training to pass three exams \u2013 standards of conduct, intake\/interview and quality review and the basic (or advanced) preparer exam. While taxpayers benefit from the free service, she says the students may benefit even more.<\/p>\n

\u201cI hope that in addition to the professional and discipline competencies, VITA helps prepare students for public lives as citizens, members of communities and professionals in a diverse, democratic society,\u201d Roberson said. \u201cThe program cultivates skills of engaged citizenship and challenges them to think about and articulate their civic role as educated professionals in their community.\u201d<\/p>\n

Roberson says the experience is \u201ctransformative\u201d for students who have never directly interacted with the public outside of Furman. \u201cI see that in their reflective writings, which can be very moving, when they relate how their view of community or themselves changes as a result of service.\u201d<\/p>\n

Tanner, of Wylie, Texas, will intern with Deloitte\u2019s Multistate Tax Services group in Charlotte, North Carolina, following graduation. In the fall, she\u2019ll begin working on her master\u2019s in professional accounting at the University of Texas at Austin. But she won\u2019t soon forget her time with VITA.<\/p>\n

\u201cMy participation with VITA is what really opened my eyes to pursuing the field of taxation as a career path in the first place,\u201d Tanner said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Sydney Tanner \u201920 looks forward to the time of year most people dread \u2013 tax season. For the third year in a row, Tanner is volunteering with Volunteer Income Tax […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":257,"featured_media":18435,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[15,20,7],"tags":[251,252,253,254],"class_list":["post-8708","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-academic-department-page","category-business-and-accounting","category-top-four-news-2nd-story","tag-accounting","tag-united-ministries","tag-united-way","tag-vita"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8708","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/257"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=8708"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8708\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/18435"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8708"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8708"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8708"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}