real-world classroom
VOLUNTEER INCOME TAX ASSISTANCE
Helping the Community
O
n March 28, the Volunteer Income Tax Assistance (VITA) program finished the tax season having completed 495 returns and 20 amended returns surpassing last year’s record of 431 returns filed. According to the program’s advisor and
clinical accounting professor, Dawn Konicek, word-of-mouth has been the program’s strongest advocate for growth. As noted in previous years, the ISU VITA program consistently files more returns on average per student than larger competing schools. Konicek noted that this year’s program was so busy that, for the first time ever, they actually had to turn a few people away
FEDERAL RESERVE Not many get the opportunity to visit the
on the last day. “We were already so swamped. I felt really bad about that.”
Federal Reserve Bank, but 15 students this year
Not only has this service been wildly popular and helpful for the local
were able to make the trip. For Kellie Gilmore,
community, but the students volunteering in the program have benefited
the former president of the Economics Club,
tremendously from the hands-on experience. “They tell me they learn more
this trip was her third. “We decided to take the
from VITA than in the classroom,” Konicek observed. “They interact with
trip because it is one of the only places where
clients, which they do not get in the classroom. They experience the tax rush, which they do not get in the classroom.” Konicek also said that this year’s rush helped prepare the students to “be more efficient, to ask the right questions and to take initiative to answer their own questions before coming to me, since I was so very busy each day.”
we could explore an environment that shows Macroeconomics and monetary policy at work,” she says. Gilmore says that she hopes “the club’s new leadership takes over the tradition of the tour,” as Gilmore graduated this past spring.
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