April 6, 2022 at 2:27 p.m.
TAXES MADE EASY
TAXES MADE EASY
And as the annual filing period enters its final stretch, students at Catholic Central High School in Troy sharpened their accounting skills to help locals in need file their taxes for free.
For over 15 years, students at CCHS have volunteered with the Catholic Charities’ Volunteer Income Tax (VITA) program, which works in collaboration with the CA$H (Creating Assets, Savings and Hope) Coalition of the Greater Capital Region to offer free tax preparation services from IRS-trained and certified volunteers to individuals or families with a household income of $54,000 or less.
VITA has been working in collaboration with Catholic Central accounting students since its inception in the Diocese, which allows students to gain hands-on experience helping locals to file their tax returns. The program kicked off at the end of January and ran through April 5.
“There’s no other high school in the area that does this,” said Andrew Kochian, VITA site coordinator for Catholic Charities. “It’s a very unique experience and (students) get that practical hands-on experience.”
Last year, the Catholic Charities’ program filed close to 500 returns, around half of its usual numbers due to COVID. Even with the drop, the program saved its clients approximately $150,000, and returned $700K in refunds to clients last year.
Typically, CCHS students have operated out of a VITA site stationed in the Albany Diocese’s Pastoral Center, located at 40 N. Main Ave., in Albany, but for the first time since the program’s collaboration with the high school, the VITA program was offered out of classrooms at Catholic Central.
“This is the only other VITA site in Troy,” Kochian said. While the CA$H Coalition offers numerous VITA sites around the Diocese, very few programs are offered in Troy.
“This is the first time the school has had the site here and people are very appreciative of that,” Kochian added. “There’s only one other (VITA site) that’s here, but they’re kind of small and they’re running virtually.”
This tax season will also be the last time students worked from the school’s Lansingburgh campus before Catholic High merges with St. Ambrose School in Latham in the fall to form the new K-12 Catholic Central School.
George Hannah, accounting and business teacher at Catholic Central, was happy to see the program back in person. During COVID, VITA volunteers worked out of a van in the parking lot of the Pastoral Center where clients would drop off their tax information to be picked up later in the week. The setup at Catholic Central still enforced social distancing and clients didn’t sit right beside students or other tax volunteers. But the environment of working together offered a sense of camaraderie, Hannah said.
All students enrolled in accounting were asked to volunteer with VITA as part of the class curriculum. Students were trained by a VITA member before they could volunteer and every return done by a student was checked by a certified public accountant.
Kara Durfee, a VITA volunteer and CPA, said she felt “very comfortable” working out of Catholic Central this year. Durfee, who grew up attending Saratoga Central Catholic School in Saratoga Springs where her daughter currently attends, added that being able to help locals in a Catholic school setting felt right to her.
“It’s good that we provide (this),” Durfee said. “Whether you’re Catholic or not, we have this nice service for you. And whenever someone leaves I can say, I just saved you $100-300, and it makes a difference. You feel like you’re making a concrete difference.”
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