I was thinking about volunteering as an AARP Tax-Aide next tax season, and I know that they train you. But what if I have a question when I’m doing a tax return that I can’t figure it out through just googling. Is there anyone that I can ask while preparing the return, or am I just on my own?
Do the AARP Tax-Aide volunteers have people they can ask questions to?
byu/AnsonChen5 intax
Posted by AnsonChen5
5 Comments
Yeah they have supervisors and managers who are generally very well seasoned, licensed tax pros who do the vita thing as pro bono work. Lots of big accounting firms sponsor paid volunteer days to go do vita
There is always more than 1 preparer at site. So definitely help is available.
Loads of help available at my site. We have 8 preparers – one former accountant, 1 cpa, and a whole load of seasoned volunteers. If we can’t come up with an answer there are tax-aide and irs resources to tap.
Keep in mind that most of the returns you are likely to do are pretty simple, and the policy is that if the return cannot be confidently prepared, then no return will be completed. IOW it is perfectly ok to tap out if the situation becomes too complex or ambiguous.
Give it a try – I’ve found it a rewarding activity and you may as well.
Yes, there will always be at least one other volunteer tax preparer working alongside you, because every return you prepare must be quality reviewed by someone else (and vice versa). There is typically a more experienced volunteer who serves as site leader for your location, who you could ask questions of, and if they don’t know the answer they can reach out to their network of others in the district or state. Generally speaking, the training materials and Publication 4012 will cover pretty much every scenario that might come up on a regular basis. Anything beyond the scope of Pub 4012 is not something that VITA/TCE is allowed to handle, anyway.
There are supervisors that you can turn to. All returns are reviewed prior to being submitted. Tax Aide has resources to look things up. Use of Google to answer questions is not allowed, you need to use validated sources for information.
The clients are screened. You will not be getting complex returns. Most of the clients have one or two w2 forms and some 1099r forms. Itemized returns are rare. If people are running a small business or have sold rental propetry, they are told to use a professional.