by Joanna Klonsky
EAST IBERVILLE, LA—Tax time. Those two little words evoke stress and anxiety for most adults. But for Kristen Smith, a 15-year-old tenth grader at East Iberville High School in St. Gabriel, Louisiana, the months before—and after—April 15 are exciting. “I wouldn’t have changed the experience for anything,” she says.
Smith, with seven of her classmates, signed up to become a volunteer income tax assistant. She underwent extensive training in tax law and preparation, and got officially certified with the IRS to help people in her community with their income taxes.
The students set up a free Volunteer Income Tax Assistance (VITA) Center in a computer lab at their high school, with sponsorship from the IRS.
“We’ve had a huge response from the community,” says Smith, who moved to East Iberville from New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina hit in 2005.
The tax program started three years ago in Saint Helena Parish, Louisiana, when a high school student began doing taxes for people in her community. That student got in touch with the Rural School and Community Trust, a non-profit organization devoted to bolstering rural education. The Rural School and Community Trust provided her project with a small Learn and Serve grant to help the program get started.
Since then, Veniayetta Aikens, the Youth Coordinator for the Rural School and Community Trust, has helped organize the VITA at East Iberville, and another at a high school in East Feliciana Parish in Jackson, Louisiana.
The Louisiana Department of Social Services helped the VITA at East Iberville in 2007 with a $15,000 grant.
“The underlying idea was to get students involved in their community, and involved in ways to reduce poverty in their area,” says Aikens.
In 2007, 20 percent of Iberville Parish citizens were living below the poverty line, according to the U.S. Census Bureau. The median family income for the parish was $37,483, more than $10,000 below the national average.
“Some people live paycheck to paycheck,” says Aikens. “For some, [a tax refund] is the money they depend on every year.”
Some 65 individuals came to the East Iberville center for tax help this year. Another 42 people got tax help from the eight teenaged volunteers in East Feliciana Parish.
Smith says preparing taxes could be “frustrating,” especially if a client came in with a particularly complicated tax return. “It’s very easy to become overwhelmed, but you have to just take some time, take a breather,” she says.
According to East Iberville business education teacher Tracy Martin, who helped coordinate the VITA there, the low-income and elderly residents in the area are the primary beneficiaries of the program, but they’re not the only ones. Anyone in the community is welcome. “We were targeting people who were eligible for the Earned Income Tax Credit,” says Martin.
With a $48,000 grant from State Farm Insurance, Martin says she plans to create a program next year in which some 20 East Iberville students like Smith can teach financial literacy courses for adults and young people in the community. Martin says that project, too, will be run in conjunction with the Rural School and Community Trust.
Martin also says plans are in the works to create a credit union at the school so students can get in the habit of depositing their money.
Smith says she will participate in the tax preparation program again next year. “You always hear, especially nowadays, ‘this generation is not into doing anything,’ or that we’re not capable of doing this,” says Smith. “I looked at it as this is the perfect opportunity to show whoever is saying that type of thing that kids can do stuff.”
Click here to see a Powerpoint presentation on financial literacy prepared by students at East Iberville High School.
