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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
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.
 
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.

 
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.
 

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:

Santa Clara County
IRS VITA Coordinator E-Mail
SCC-IRS-VITA-coordinator@vita-volunteers.org
IRS VITA Coordinator E-Mail IRS-VITA-coordinator@vita-volunteers.org
Web site E-Mail (Only for website related issues, not for VITA site information, training or tax law questions or site locations) webmaster@vita-volunteers.org
Volunteer sign-up announcements http://groups.yahoo.com/group/vita-information

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Information on this site is obtained from sources considered reliable, but not guaranteed  accurate.  The purpose is to inform only; for advice and decisions, please refer to the official IRS website http://www.irs.gov. This site has a privacy policy.Comments regarding this web site should be directed to webmaster@vita-volunteers.org
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Last modified: 04/08/08.