Happy Friday everyone! Can you believe it? Tax Day is a month away! Thanks for all your effort, insight, and excellent questions as we approach the end of tax season!

Some notes for this week...

Valet Tickets

Tickets that come through our Valet service will not have pictures of the taxpayer's ID and SS cards uploaded. You will find this information recorded on the Valet Cover Sheet with the rest of their scanned documents. The identification verification happens with the Intake Specialist at the site, and the information on the Valet Cover Sheet should be considered verified. Please reach out to Robert if you have questions on a specific ticket.  

All Tax Preparers: Remember to check the EITC lookback option for every return within EITC income limits!

Since some families’ 2021 earned income may still have been affected by the pandemic, either through job loss or reduced hours, their eligibility for the TY 2021 EITC may have been impacted. In order to prevent a reduction in EITC for eligible families, the IRS allows taxpayers to claim the EITC on the basis of EITHER their pre-pandemic, 2019 earned income or their 2021 earned income. For this reason, we are asking taxpayers to provide a copy of their 2019 tax return.

How to determine 2019 earned income:

1. Add up the following amounts from the 2019 tax return:

• Form 1040, line 1, Wages, salaries, tips, etc.
• Form 1040, Schedule 1, line 3, Business income or (loss)

2. Enter this amount in TaxSlayer > Basic Information > Personal Information

TaxSlayer will compare to 2021 earned income and automatically determine which yields the greater EITC and ACTC benefit.

Jerry Ershun helped us put together a helpful cheat sheet for considering Look Back. Find it here: EITC Look Back Check

Logging Hours

The VITA program relies on funding from the IRS, which is directly related to the number of service hours provided by all VITA volunteers. 

Please make sure that you log ALL your volunteer hours either in the Volunteer Log available at all physical VITA sites or, for volunteers working remotely, using this link: https://forms.office.com/r/dg0XcRynNw

Don't forget! Please be sure to track the hours you are working in the Hub.

*Note that we made a few tweaks to this form - volunteers now have the option of logging total hours over a date range in addition to tracking clocking in/out times on certain days. Please feel free to track your hours in the way that makes most sense for your situation on the form.