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Uploaded: Thursday, January 24, 2013, 1:03 PM
Free help with income tax
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by Ashley Finden
Mountain View Voice Staff
Free tax preparation services will be available for low-income families in the Mountain View area. The two Mountain View sites are San Antonio Place, at 210 San Antonio Cir., and St. Athanasius Church, 160 N Rengstorff Ave.
United Way Silicon Valley is working with multiple financial institutions, nonprofits and government agencies, including the Internal Revenue Service, to provide free tax services through its Earn It! Keep It! Save It! Program.
People who earn $51,000 or less in 2012 are eligible for free tax services and encouraged to wait for the Volunteer Income Tax Assistant sites to open later in the month, according to Carole Leigh Hutton, president and CEO of United Way Silicon Valley.
Trained, IRS-certified volunteers at Volunteer Income Tax Assistance sites throughout Santa Clara County provide all tax preparation services. For listings of all locations and more information, go to www.211scc.org.
Tax preparation services are offered in a number of languages, including English, Spanish, Chinese, Vietnamese and Russian. Are you receiving Express, our free daily e-mail edition? See a sample and sign-up for Express.
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Posted by Martin Omander, a resident of the Rex Manor neighborhood, on Jan 24, 2013 at 3:47 pm This is a great initiative! Many people get into trouble with IRS, not because they try to shirk their tax responsibilities, but because they didn't know how to declare taxes correctly.
In related news, some countries send simplified, pre-printed tax forms to tax-payers. If you agree with the amounts in the form, you simply sign at the bottom. If you don't agree, you turn in the regular non-simplified form. It is my understanding that employers report your income to the IRS, so unless you have exotic deductions the IRS already knows what your taxes ought to be.
It would be great if we could do the same in the US. I believe there was a trial program for this some years back, but it was never expanded to the general public.
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