[Music] [Music] hello and welcome to senior speak New Hampshire I'm Dan wise host of this show and a volunteer for AARP which sponsors the show today we're going to talk about money money you can save as a taxpayer and even more importantly money and time and trouble you can save others as a volunteer this is a f we are going to talk today about a fantastic program out there that can help many people with their taxes for free and taxes why are we talking about taxes now this is a fantastic program that is looking for more volunteers to join it and um uh learn how to um help people with their tax uh their tax forms and get this as a volunteer you can have a really valuable gratifying impact on seniors and others who come to this program which is called uh tax Aid a few hundred Volunteers in our state not CPAs but people with the right training and support are able to help thousands thousands of people with preparing their tax returns looking at their numbers each volunteer saved an average of $10,000 in preparation fees for the people that they helped tax Aid is a project of the AARP foundation and my guest today is Peter Balo a volunteer and spokesman for the program here in New Hampshire welcome Peter thanks for having me Dan thank you all right so why don't you explain a little bit about what um tax Aid is who it helps and and how it works okay uh tax Aid is a a free tax preparation um operation that operates throughout the state of New Hampshire and actually throughout the the whole country um we do federal and state income taxes for pretty almost everybody there's no age requirement uh you don't uh it's not just for ARP members uh but I will say that um this last year 60 over 65% of our clients uh were 60 years old or older but I've done I've done taxes myself for people who as young as 21 uh U one of the um one issue that sadly most of us don't face is we can only do taxes for people with income below $165,000 per year um I wish we all exceeded that but we don't that's still a pretty broad that's that that covers a good a good chunk of people who uh who are maybe in need or not in need but also just life's complicated Y and uh in in five years I've had to turn away exactly one client because they exceeded that limit um most sites um of ours throughout the state will do taxes while you wait um takes an hour or so uh we also have others we have a few sites that uh where you would come in we would scan your tax your tax documents and then we would work on them remotely and have you come back just to sign the final form and we e file for for everybody and again that's a that's part of the the free service okay now you have a you have a a slide there that that talks about the impact of the program how many people have been helped and and how many people volunteer so I think uh Matt's going to pull up that slide in a moment sure and um but it's it's amazing there's not that many Vol as I said there's only a few hundred volunteers and they have an enormous impact true there's about 313 of us um that was for tax year 2023 um almost none of us are retired CPA um I'm not I I was doing engineering and marketing professionally um but we're supported by a ARP foundation and the IRS um we we are IRS certified every year um uh for our different positions uh diff if you do somebody's taxes your certification is different than if you're a meter and greeter for instance um but we're all well schooled in things like computer security and privacy laws and and the like so well how many people um did you guys do returns for last year last year we did uh just over 10,874 U returns uh Federal returns I think we we could put up the by the number slide yeah okay um so each of those returns was for a single person or a couple maybe or a couple with children perhaps uh we also do state returns uh uh depending on the location in New Hampshire some places do Mass non-resident some do main non-resident or resident and some do Vermont as well um last year we generated refund refunds totaling over 11 M400 th000 which was a record for us uh and we saved the clients an estimated $3.2 million in preparation fees uh because if if you don't come to us uh and you go to the quote unquote professional tax preparers they tend to charge dearly mhm yeah and um it's uh now let's talk about this you you as you said you are not a CPA and a lot of the people that that do this are not have have a heavy background can you talk a little bit about who um who volunteers for the program and what kinds of things they do because they apparently they sure if you're doing the returns you work on uh there's a software program that uh that you to use right absolutely it's just like uh some people buy Turbo Tax and do their own returns we have um we have something called tax Slayer that the IRS provides us um um to do the returns with and um we use that it's as far as we can tell as far as I can tell uh it's the only um tax software that doesn't uh report anything to places like Google and Facebook uh when you buy when you buy um uh H&R Blocks or Turbo Tax um you end up signing away your rights to full privacy and uh um fortunately in the when the IRS contracted with tax layer part of their terms and conditions was Thou shalt not send any information to anybody else other than to the IRS MH so interesting so what what what's involved in um someone undertaking the you know signing up to volunteer what what what what kind of training happens and uh what are the sort of roles that you can play sure um well the the training occurs in generally in December and January um the IRS provides study guides uh for tax preparation um and also another study guide on uh privacy and security uh AARP provides uh presentations and study guides on security uh actually working with the public um something we all need to know um and and S and whatnot um we take a certification test and um go off and do our jobs um there's also uh local training um at various sites throughout New Hampshire so in learning how to do the IRS uh tax preparation stuff in particular um we would we have a training site in in seabook we've got one in man Chester and other places through the state where uh in December or January volunteers can get together and work through common problems um we have like sample problems it's more of an intera that's kind of a interactive thing with the people you will be working within that location usually yep yeah um but um as long as people pass it to test it's like you don't have to go and and take the on onsite TR training um and and as far as the roles people play they're pretty varied a there's a slide I think we have a slide on volunteer roles okay y oh great oh good so the the easiest I I'll say uh is what we call client facilitators but truly it's Meers and greeters and someone to just uh look at paperwork organization make sure they have everything they need uh make sure they have their driver's license and it's been seen make sure that we have their social security number either from their social security card or from their social security statements that they get Social Security just to make sure we have all the Ducks lined up and in a row and then that then that person's packet is handed off to a tax preparer there probably being able to properly identify yourself is yeah kind of is kind of key otherwise somebody could do something oh identity theft is something we're very concerned with yeah um in fact um um just two years ago I did taxes for a 21-year-old lady um who didn't turns out she didn't have to do taxes she didn't earn enough she was right out of college and hadn't earned very much um but I had her actually do her taxes and we emailed it in she didn't owe them anything they didn't owe her anything but it basically registered her name and address and social security number with the IRS so if somebody was able to somehow get her social security number through nefarious means um they couldn't have uh a return in her name um um or or refund in her name mailed elsewhere mhm so yeah it's uh it's useful do they sometimes have F do you said maybe 65% of the folks are over over 50 or over over 60 but you do you see families come in or people come in with their young kids or usually not usually not with young kids but with school you know kids who are maybe entering the work Force yes in fact this this lady I mentioned earlier this 21-year-old came in with came in with her parents uh who were I would guess in their 50s or early 60s so somebody else took care of the parents and I and I took care of the young ladies returned all right and now what's the time commitment that uh this ends up being for somebody to get involved so so the training is is December January time frame and then obviously I guess February 1 to April 15th the filing fever time is is there a particular time that it's well people don't really start filing until they get their correct their I always get confused as their social security comes first usually security yeah so they get that so it's February to pretty much April end of the middle of April absolutely and um the time commitment for a volunteer um it it's very site dependent um the site that um I'm site coordinator of in in plastow um operates uh Monday and Thursday from 9:00 in the morning until about 1 in the afternoon um but I have some I have a couple people who can only make Monday or they can only make Thursday uh so so it's um it's open that way and then we have these other other sites where someone comes in our taxpayer comes in and we just scan their documents in into tax layer uh so we'll have one or two people just scanning documents um and they walk away and the tax preparers do the preparation work on their own time at home oh okay okay it's so it's it's a mixed mixed bag yeah but the tax preparers are working on um it's it's kind of a very defined thing it's not like they're given a huge stack of people's stuff and and uh and end up being backlogged or overwhelmed by it it's that they they get the return and they do it with this taxpayer software and then give it back to the client and they're done with it they're not it's not an ongoing thing no um we I think that's important to mention when you talk about volunteer yeah commitments we in at least at my plast outsite we try to do a oneandone operation um we're we're at our Public Library so someone will come in meet with a client facilitator um we get who takes all of their documents and we basically let them loose into the library um as wait you mean to wait go go read a book go read a newspaper uh there's coffee in the front lobby and uh and we do the uh tax work in the back room um and typically we're done in half an hour to an hour um it's it's that's kind of a variable as the year goes on I I I will say that initially in February our very first clients are those who just have social security they walk in with that one form and that goes very quickly um and then as the year progresses we start getting people with 1099 RS which is retirement income and W2s and at the very tail and those again very straightforward very very easy to deal with to work with but then at the end we get people who have 0 four five six broker accounts and um um a whole re of paperwork so they end up taking a little bit longer mhm and um do uh I think there must be sort of a an emotional element to this in the sense that you're working with people who might be very anxious about the process or anxious about their taxes and is that ever come up is I mean and you're also dealing with their personal sensitive information um yeah um definitely the the the sensitive information not so much I mean I think when they come to us they know they have to show us their documents um I think people are reassured when we tell them that um I can't copy their information I can't even copy the results from tax layer onto a USB stick or or email it to myself um the Chromebooks were used that are provided by the a ARP Foundation are very locked down uh I can't go home and and print out people's forms it's just it just doesn't work and I suspect although I haven't tried it uh that if I actually attempted to do so I I think alarms would go off someplace yes that would be bad and as as far as um the emotionalism yeah um it really hits home uh when you're you're working with a you know a 75 or an 80y old widow or widower and and they they own a house somehow and you look at it it all they have is $112,000 of Social Security and a couple thousand of pension it's like you know you have you have to do right by these people they're barely getting by um wow and some people take it are very emotional uh there's one lady who's return I've done now four years running um she comes in and pretty much every year the the government owes her about $50 and she is so happy with that but the one year she owed 20 she was near in tears uh and I actually I actually gave a return to somebody else and said I think she owes $20 let's do this again just to be sure um although every return we do is double checked um we by by policy we have two sets of eyes that look at each return and um and the fact that two different people looked at a particular return is stored in tax Slayer software so we can always go back and say Pete and Pete and Paul you guys both did this return and and we can knot our heads yes we did I see I see it do you have any figures on how your accuracy Compares like you know the IRS will figure your taxes and I know that there's been a little that's not always been as effective as as adverti as you would think it should be right um we don't have a number like that but we do have a number on what percentages what percentage of our returns were rejected by the IRS okay and you you could be rejected for any number of reasons um if it's a a husband and wife who come in and you put the for instance the husband is a primary taxpayer and the and the wife is the secondary if if the year before it was the opposite it gets rejected okay um but are re and when something's rejected we're told about it before the client leaves oh wow and oh wow great we have a chance to make it right or or if we miss it or or if they leave really quickly we call them back in say hey we got to do a redo on this um our reject rejection rate's under 2% okay great uh and that and that is uh at least as good as the quote unquote professional taxpayers or tax uh preparers that's that's great that's a that's a great uh great record so let's talk about um using tax Aid as a as a client what what's involved with that so um first of all I think there I found a uh I found a chart that um is called I think it's how long it takes to file and um it's a black and white chart that um that uh shows just I mean I think the irs's estimate of quote the average taxpayer which is pretty hard to figure yeah I think they talked about something like uh 7 to 13 hours to do your taxes which incorporates everything from keeping keeping records during the year to getting the documents together to doing to doing all that and then I think for the simpler returns and the chart that chart up there shows that the simpler returns which is primarily what you guys are concentrating on and we'll get into that a little bit more it's still um it's still a number of hours um and you're once you bring the right documents in it's less than an hour it's less than hour typically typically typically less than an hour and that's to and that's including the double checking right that's including the double checking bringing um our quality person bringing the taxpayer back in to explain the whole return to them uh and then getting their permission to e file right there okay so now let's talk about why uh why you might consider doing using tax Aid and where you'd go for that first of all what let's go over uh who who can use tax Aid and and who can't because I know there's some limitations on the kind of returns you'll do for obvious reasons you're not going to do Donald Trump's taxes I would think no nor camela Harris's no um we um we we tend to do um we do any t almost any tax up up to uh $165,000 of income things we are not allowed to to to do uh this is per IRS rules uh because they haven't trained Us in these things uh we can't do the taxes for anybody who has uh rental housing uh who owns rental housing owns rental housing yes we can't rental income rental income we can't do the taxes for small businesses that um hold inventory over a year or until the next year because of depreciation issues we're not taught how to do the depreciation stuff um however um there's one lady whose returned I do every year uh she's basically retired but just for uh to keep her hand in something she she has a single chair um beauty salon and all she has is her rent and how much her supplies cost how much her tools cost and what her income was yeah you know or how much money was paid to her and those kind of small businesses we can handle yeah yeah um so somebody who does repairs and they don't keep their yeah they don't keep their they don't sell stuff that they have accumulated inventory right but they just take machines in and fix them something like that some a lot of small businesses those guys could do that even if they're they're not making a ton of money uh actually a friend of mine who used our services for the first time this last year um has a job where he repairs x-ray machines for hospitals wow but but he isn't um he isn't a uh a W2 employee he isn't considered an employee uh so they send him what's called a 1099 NEC um and we did his return he's allowed to deduct mileage wear and tear in the car um some meals things like that we could handle we can handle that kind of thing do that yeah oh yeah so now we' talked a little bit about the privacy protections um and um but I guess another situation that comes up is uh someone is a a caregiver or an agent y uh they have power of attorney for someone else and you can handle you can help them AB absolutely um generally speaking in most cases um if there's a a husband and SP a spouse um we we have them coming together if if uh somebody can't because they're in a hospital or whatever uh we can usually work with that if somebody has a uh somebody's in a nursing home and their child has power of attorney or some friend has power of attorney they they can come in with a person's forms and as long as they can show us the power of attorney letter we can do it for them okay so and then and then I think the main thing is um there's a very clear list of expectations that you have of what people need to bring yes because and it's a little more extensive than someone might think it is but I'm not not criticizing it but it's I think and I think there's a slide on on that um yeah on WE CLI bring what the clients need to bring yep I think a lot of it makes oh there it is great yeah I think I think a lot of it makes sense when we go down to the list is a photo ID for for all taxpayers uh so if it's a if it's a couple we want to see both of theirs um if they have dependence we don't need to see the dependence but we do need uh social security cards from all taxpayers and dependents um if you're a taxpayer and you can't find your social security card but you have your social security statement uh that you get annually says how much income you receive from Social Security bring that you're going to have to bring it in anyhow to show us uh that has their social security number on it BR if you're employed bringing your W2 forms form or forms um if you have retirement payments uh bring in your 1099 RS um if you have brokerage accounts or sometimes bank accounts uh you'll have you'll receive a1099 div for dividend or int for interest yeah um bring those in if you have brokerage accounts uh with stocks and mutual funds and the like you'll get a 1099 B bring it in um and any other income forms if you I mentioned a friend of mine who gets a 1099 NEC is being an independent contractor bring it in um there's a 1099 M misc right oh there they have like they have like 50 variations of those yeah I've gotten those uh if you if you think you can itemize your deductions uh and last year the limit was about about $115,000 for single person almost $30,000 for a couple a married couple um you know bring in your receipts we'll work through it and see if you can itemize or not um so do you do you still have the situation where people come in with a box of receipts yes we do uh it's relatively rare um but we can we can cope with that we ask yeah um it's easy when people have just the year- end forms you know when like your bank send you a 1099 int but when they bring in the 1099 int buried under a stack of 12 monthly statements from their Bank you know we pretty quickly go through set aside the monthly statements and just look at the year end cuz that's the only one that really counts and if the IRS has sent you a letter during the year like if um if uh if if there you were a victim of identity theft you might have a certain code that that the IRS gives you we need to know that so that they know we're we're not filing fraudulent taxes in your name oh okay so they send that sort of as a a preventive measur away yeah um also um if you're going to uh if you believe you'll get a a Fund bring a um avoid a check in okay okay we need your routing number and account number to have it automatically deposited or we can just have them send you a a check uh from the IRS it just takes a couple weeks longer typically and it's also useful to bring in the last one or two years uh tax forms um just for the simple reason that uh somebody you come in this year and you give have your you have your your all your forms and you only have one 1099 R retirement fund might ask I might I might look at last year is like oh last year you had two and say did you forget one and 99% of the time uh yeah that didn't come in they forgot it so then we can partly do their return and then they have to find the the second one that's that's one you know that's one thing where when you deal with these companies that keep your data they sometime they will sometimes prompt you about something that you've didn't have the year before right but here you're getting the service for free and you're also getting the Privacy protection they're not keeping your data from year to year but you that it makes it a little more incumbent on you do you get a uh you must get hard copy of your taxes when you're done oh yes people walk away with a hard copy of their taxes and all the all the tax forms they they brought in right and and then you e and you do the E filing for them also we do the E filing um and that doesn't that is not an extra that's not a charge no we can't we can't charge anyone for anything we can't take tips uh if you come in if you come in with a bag of cookies to say thank you I have to turn them away um what I not even cookies not even cookies what I what I what I generally do at my site is I say if you want to give somebody some cookies the Librarians out in front would probably appreciate it uh but I can't accept that M um are there any any like complicated situations that you guys handle that we'd be surprised that you do that uh energy tax credits uh is something we do that's a little bit more complicated is that like when you get a if you have solar energy or solar energy or if you put in Mini Splits or uh new double Paine or triple pane windows um we can U as long as you have the receipts on those things we can uh we can um enter all that information in and see if you qualify for a tax credit on those okay all right um okay and then you also do state returns if you have out of state return and you're and the neighboring if it's a center that's in near one of these neighboring states mass or Maine ormont you guys are doing that and then there's also the New Hampshire interest in dividends tax which is going away in theory okay good they're down to 3% this year and I think that's it I think it goes from 3 to zero oh wow okay good but we'll say our politicians can do anything yeah who knows um and we tend most sites that do other other states returns do uh non-residents only uh I think our Conway site might do main resident uh but that's kind of unusual and the reason they do it in particular is because there used to be one of our sites in fryberg main closed soberg people get you're getting the fryberg uh business yes all right right and now speaking of locations um uh you have a map um where are where are we in New Hampshire right and it shows the location all the many locations that we do have at the moment right so so I split the map in half just to occupy more of the screen the left half is a Northern Tier from a conquered North the right one is the Southern Tier if you will um and yeah we're we're all over the the Seaboard Keen uh Nation um Manchester several sites conquer has a couple sites um where we where we're we can use volunteers everywhere uh because there's always a flow of people you know someone kind of decides they're getting a little too old to do this and they flow out so we need a replacement um we're really looking we're really would like to open more sites in the North Country uh and in The Lakes region of New Hampshire the Lakes Region we have a we can't actually even open a site for business unless we have two people and we have several sites that only have two people so if one of them leaves we're in a world of heart hurt and we can't help those people anymore yeah um so uh so we're looking for volunteers everywhere okay and uh there's a sheet that has there's a slide that has some contact info if you are there are intrigued sufficiently intrigued by our Illuminating conversation um about how to volunteer and um there's a phone number uh which is 60323 412 4121 yes and a webs and an email and a website there the website's pretty easy as well just aarp.org volunteer programs taxid okay and actually just by going to the main aarp.org site um you can find way to volunteer and then pick tax Aid is the place to volunteer yeah the ARP website is uh I've found a really is uh really pretty good at being able to search so you can pump pump something in there that you're looking for and often it'll help you find it and um so what's the is there a time period or a deadline for signing up there's really not a well yeah I suppose um Mid November okay mid November is kind of when we need really understand how many people we have um but now between now and October I'd say is is prime time uh the earlier you tell us that you're interested the earlier we could start you know um just working with you uh informally if nothing else and we need people to do a variety of things from meeting and greeting to preparing taxes and doing uh doing quality control on taxes uh to helping us recruit other people uh to going around uh to TV stations and newspapers and dropping off um uh ads and PR stuff Anders and flyers so really you know if you uh if you're looking for a way to have a real impact as a volunteer this is this is a great program maybe you have a uh a spouse that's that's lying around the house and you want to get them out of the house and get them doing something this is a really w a really valid and it's a very shortterm uh it's a it's a uh short-term commitment um that depending on the site I guess as to how many what days you work or whatever but and we're flexible on that again if a site has a couple days that they're open like like uh plastow um I'm very very happy having somebody come in just one day a week yeah um there's no there's no equipment or anything required we provide I should say the ARP Foundation provides uh Chromebooks which are basically basic laptop computers yeah um the networking equipment we have our own secure network we use we we don't just like I don't just go to the plasta public library network uh things are secured through our router and encrypted then it goes to there um and we have all that our printers and scanners and whatnot yeah so you have everything all lined up for it and um the other thing we we forgot to mention is that there is a lot of resources that you have for if some special situation comes up there's uh some resources that are approved by IRS that you use for if people have questions that are when they're in the process of doing the return oh sure we uh the IRS gives us a couple hundred page uh handbook every year um with all of their update up-to-date rules and how to handle various situations um we can also uh uh call we also have a number we can call if we have any specific question uh on something that's extremely difficult um and also um we have translators that we can we can whistle up on the phone oh oh that's a great point we don't all speak Americans new Americans could be absolutely taking advantage of this uh in fact um some of the sites such as I would say man more towards Manchester nashwa um uh conquered um uh we would welcome uh we would welcome to have onsite translators you know yeah that might put people a little more at ease that's that's true great well Peter uh is there anything else that we didn't cover you think we we I think we touched on on everything uh it's a good this is a great service um it makes you feel good when when you go home and that you've done some good for folks um and it's good for the community uh people love it yeah I really appreciate you coming in it was a great discussion so thanks for coming Peter thanks for having me appreciate it I had one last thing that I wanted to do and that is to um I'm always looking for ideas for future shows and um we have uh the um AARP webs um AARP has an email address NH aarp.org so if you have any suggestions for the show um we'd love to get them the show is air um we do one show a month and show it on community conquered Community TV and also it's available on the AARP uh website but I'm always looking for ideas so I appreciate it if uh if you drop drop me a line thanks again Peter and uh we'll see you next month