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Volunteer Income Tax Assistance (VITA)
volunteers provide FREE Income Tax Preparation Assistance to low-Income,
elderly, disabled and limited English speaking people. Volunteers get
FREE classroom training during the Saturdays in January at the San Jose
IRS Office in Santa Clara County, and certification by the IRS
after satisfactorily completing an open book exam. The definition of
low-income changes from year to year and from site to site, and for 2008
(i.e. 2007 Tax Season) it is approximately $42,000 for each return,
although some sites take that to mean $21,000 for an individual
taxpayer. The level and intensity of training is less
than that for paid preparers, and the issues faced by VITA volunteers
are generally different from those of paid preparers. Depending
on their level of certification, volunteers are taught to correctly
identify filing status, and to prepare returns with wages, tips,
interest, dividends, unearned income, social security and retirement
income, and self-employed income for Schedule C-EZ. Filling in
Schedules C, D, and E are not part of the training or requirement for
VITA volunteers, but certain sites may be able to help with such
returns, provided it does not become an exercise in adding up long rows
of numbers. |
October 2005
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VITA is now VRPP!
After
30 years as VITA, the organization is now renamed
Volunteer Return Preparation Program (VRPP).
Other interpretations of VRPP included
here. |
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May 2006
| Owing to the popular name brand recognition that
VITA enjoyed, it now appears that VITA will remain VITA, a part of VRPP. On May 18,
2006 a search on www.irs.gov for
"Volunteer Return Preparation Program" returned 9281 results and for "VRPP",
241 results. The results relate to the training materials, testing,
quality and a wealth of other information where these terms are used.
No definitive description about VRPP itself was found within the first 30 results,
so here is an informal and unofficial description.
VRPP appears to be the name given to an organization that uses
volunteer power, and has four main components: (1)
VITA - Volunteer Income Tax Assistance (2) Military VITA - same
as (1) but focused on Military personnel (3) TCE - Tax Counseling
for the Elderly, and (4) AARP - American Association of Retired
persons. |
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December 2006
| Because of confusion in headquarters and
field offices, SPEC directors have now issued an official clarification.
It appears that the acronym will no longer be used to refer to volunteer
programs as initially intended, and only used to refer to VRPP Quality
and VRPP QIP (quality improvement program). More details available
here. |
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This website was launched on January
16, 2003 as
http://www.vita-irs.org and maintained by a volunteer for
volunteers and volunteer coordinators of the VITA program.
It was since renamed
http://www.vita-volunteers.org, and supported in part by
sponsored links and advertisements.
This website provides information and
communication for VITA volunteers and site coordinators. It
focuses on the area known as San Jose Territory, which is
roughly the area between Santa Clara and Kern Counties.
As of May 1, 2006 it covers Santa
Clara, Santa Cruz, San Benito, Modesto, Tuolumne,
Stanislaus, Merced and Mariposa Counties. The
range is limited by the personal resources of the person
maintaining this website, and the sphere of influence of
the IRA VITA coordinator for San Jose and Modesto.
While the goal of the website
was to reach a broad audience, practical considerations
limit us to focus on Santa Clara County in California as
of December 2007.
The primary reason is that the IRS VITA Coordinator
works closely with the webmaster to provide County
specific information, and also provides the site URL for
registration and reference. Other Counties or
Sites or cities will be profiled if the Site Coordinator
from that location is willing to work with the
webmaster.
On occasion, potential
volunteers from outside Santa Clara County have requested
information and signed up on the Santa Clara County
Online Registration list. Since it is not possible
to provide information from outside the County, an
enquiry form for such volunteers has also been set up, and the information
and query
is forwarded to the relevant IRS department.
While designed for volunteers and
coordinators,
this website is also visited by taxpayers, and from
sites within the IRS. We welcome you to this site, and hope
your visit provides value to you. Since much of the
information needed by volunteers is also useful for
Taxpayers served by VITA, this site may be useful for
the taxpayers as well. It is
with regret that the self-signed guest book feature
was discontinued. The number of entries saying
"Great Site" followed by links to sites that provided
information on how to enlarge various parts of the anatomy,
buy medications to enhance performance of some very pleasant friendly
activities, buy genuine
fake antiques and valuables, and trade your low interest
rate mortgage for a higher interest rate mortgage were getting out of
hand, simply drowning out genuine comments, and filling up
the disk storage allocation of this domain. For
serious discussions on VITA related issues, please check
out the blog
where you may comment after providing minimal
registration information.
This website is not an official website of the U.S.
Government, U.S. Treasury, IRS, or the California
Franchise Tax Board. Although every attempt
was made to obtain information from reliable sources,
the information is not guaranteed accurate. This
site is intended for information only and offered as a
public service and a courtesy. Please contact the your
VITA Site coordinator or the IRS VITA Coordinator for authoritative answers to
make decisions. Contacts for VITA questions:
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