Historic Volunteer Income Tax Assistance Season Pivots to Virtual Support

When the Covid-19 pandemic hit, many events were delayed such as weddings, proms, graduations, and even Tax Day. Never did our Volunteer Income Tax Assistance (VITA) program think that we would be preparing taxes until July 15th.

Molly Timmins, a Granite United Way VISTA member, took on the role as Site Coordinator at Whole Village Family Resource Center’s VITA site. During Molly’s year of service at Whole Village, she has been working on a nationwide Economic Mobility project. Her plans were to coordinate a successful tax site until the deadline, April 15th, and then work to bring financial literacy programming to Whole Village. She didn’t know that these plans would soon change.

In a short month and a half, this site alone prepared 160 tax returns to low-income individuals and families in the Greater Plymouth area. When Covid-19 hit, all VITA sites closed their doors and cancelled hundreds of taxpayer appointments. These were individuals who simply could not afford to go to a paid preparer. Molly and the other volunteers from the program knew that there had to be another way to serve their communities, even in a pandemic.

Molly and Nisa Similia, Site Coordinator at the River Center in Peterborough, drafted a plan to open the first ever ‘Virtual VITA site’ where volunteer tax preparers and taxpayers were able to quarantine and get their taxes prepared in a professional and secure setting.  This proposal was sent off to the IRS and by April 16th, the Virtual VITA site was preparing taxes again. For the next three months, the VITA Volunteers helped tax payers prepare their tax returns, claim the economic impact payment, and file extensions from their own homes.

“The adjustment from sitting with a taxpayer to prepare their taxes, to doing it from home and over the phone was a learning curve for all of us,” explained Molly. “But in these unprecedented times, this was a program that is vital to our community members and our volunteers would do anything to help.”

In a little over six months, the longest tax season yet, the VITA program prepared 3,659 returns across the state. 1,141 of these returns prepared during the pandemic.