Nothing is too taxing for CCHS students

Students are speaking a foreign language at Catholic Central High School in Troy -- a tongue that remains, for many Americans, confounding and undecipherable.

"We have a 201e and an 84c stapled together with a W-2 for each," Michael Hawkins, a representative from the New York State Tax Department, says to Kaleigh Flanigan, 15, who gathers the requested forms.

Kaleigh can speak "tax law," that often confusing set of rules and regulations governing federal and state income tax. Like others in the accounting class at Catholic Central, she has become a tax preparer in the Volunteer Income Tax Assistance (VITA) program, a project of the Internal Revenue Service.

Real world

"It's real," Kaleigh said, waving over her next customer. "These are real people. It's not just sitting in a classroom."

Recently, the students and their teacher, Debbie Doling, set up a makeshift office in the CCHS library, complete with printers, laptops and representatives from the IRS to help out. The class prepared returns for their classmates.

In addition, the teens will go to the Albany and Troy Housing Authorities to prepare tax returns for low-income residents.

Adding up

"I like math and working with numbers," said Jessica Jones, 17, another tax preparer. "Numbers challenge me. I want to go to school for taxes and accounting. There are so many things you have to memorize. It makes me nervous, because you can type in one wrong number, and they could either be getting less taxes than they should or more."

According to IRS senior tax specialist Tom Kane, nothing like that has yet happened.

"The students are very energetic learners," he told The Evangelist. "As a teacher, I always look at the eyes -- and their eyes are brighter than most students'."

Meaning business

The accounting class is an elective, taken in the context of a business sequence. As a result, many of the students have an interest in business, math and numbers; some, like Jessica and Ed Gavin, 16, have accountants and businesspeople in the family.

"This is definitely a skill I'll keep for my whole career," Ed noted.

"They sound like they work for Jackson Hewitt," Mrs. Doling "During training, it was, 'Let's do another one; let's do another one.' We ran out of training examples."

Training

The teens spent "six hours a day for two days just getting taxes pounded into their heads," during the VITA training, Mr. Kane explained.

They learned to recognize, prepare and explain tax credits that apply to low-income citizens: the Earned Income Tax Credits, the Additional Child Tax Credit, other credits related to children, educational credits, write-offs, adjustments and itemization.

Even though they were planning to prepare most of the returns via computer, the students still had to learn to do it by hand, said Mr. Kane.

Returns

Jennie Crandall, 17, plans to go to Hudson Valley Community College in North Greenbush to major in business. This is her second year as a VITA tax preparer.

"I do this to help people get more money back," she said. "I look forward to helping them out."

Matthew Alrutz, 17, has decided to attend SUNY/Fredonia for physics and engineering next fall, even though business is in his blood. He was introduced to the subject through family members involved in the profession. He said that teens should become aware about tax matters as soon as they earn their first paycheck.

"If you claim yourself as an exemption, you can get the state and federal money back," he explained. "That's basically what we are doing today. They think they are too young for that, but they're not."

Kaleigh has more tax advice for teens: "See how much you get taken out in state taxes. A lot of people owe state taxes because they don't get enough taken out of their paychecks. At the federal level, they're fine; but the state -- that's what gets you."

(Catholic High is one of only three high schools in New York State with a teen VITA program.)

(3/11/04) [[In-content Ad]]