Accounting Practicum Immerses Students in Community Service

by Amy Lavergne
Valerie Schier, finance senior, remembers a young woman who entered the Community Tax Center in Austin to get help filing her taxes.

She was claiming her 14-year-old brother as a dependent, so Schier asked the woman a series of questions to make sure that was legitimate. It turned out that the woman had supported her brother for 10 months last year when their only at-home parent was in a correctional facility.

“Here was this young girl with no parental support, working full time at minimum wage, pursuing a degree and at the same time raising a 14-year-old who probably doesn’t appreciate being told what to do by his sister,” Schier recalls. “This young woman found herself in a lonely world, taking on more responsibility than one could expect.” When Schier walked the young woman to the exit, she felt humbled.

“She was a shining example of what it means to let nothing get in the way of your goals, and more importantly, to never give up,” says Schier. “Those 20 minutes alone make this whole experience more of a blessing than I could have hoped for.”
Schier was part of Accounting Professor Steve Limberg’s new service-learning course, Federal Taxation of Low Income Filers: Socio-Economic Forces. The class requires each student to perform 60 hours of community service in addition to attending the weekly class meeting.

Academic service-learning integrates community service, academic learning and civic learning. The University of Texas at Austin Office of the Provost, deems it a “response to the call for higher education to take responsibility for preparing active citizens for a diverse democracy.”

Because academic service-learning is integrated into class curricula, any course can take advantage of this pedagogical model. Faculty interested in developing academic service-learning courses are asked to create these courses from the perspective of how the course and the activity in the community advance scholarship and effective teaching.

In Limberg’s class—the Department of Accounting’s first service-learning course—students work with Community Tax Centers, a Foundation Communities program that partners with the Internal Revenue Service to implement the Volunteer Income Tax Assistance (VITA) program for low-income filers.

The VITA program offers free tax help to low- to moderate-income people who need help preparing tax returns. Limberg’s spring class comprised almost half the volunteers needed at the center this year.

Of 144 students enrolled, about 20 are pursuing graduate degrees. Since no accounting or tax background is necessary and students of all levels are eligible to take the course, students in the class are earning a variety of degrees, from BBAs to MBAs and MPAs.

In addition to the community service opportunity, Schier says the flexibility of the class is a big advantage.

“I received an e-mail from Professor Limberg detailing the opportunity and immediately I knew this was something I wanted to do,” Schier says. “Working full time and being a student full time does not allow me to do the community service type of work that I’d like to do.”

Nationally, various community organizations are involved in similar projects, which execute the VITA program and train volunteers to help prepare basic tax returns for people in the community. These trained community volunteers can also help the participants acquire special credits, such as the Earned Income Tax Credit (EITC), Child Tax Credit and Credit for the Elderly.

VITA sites are generally located at community and neighborhood centers, such as libraries, schools, shopping malls and other convenient locations.

Community Tax Centers (CTC) serve single filers with a total income of $20,000 or less, married joint filers with a total combined income of $40,000 or less, and anyone with one or more dependents with total income of $40,000 or less. They do not serve clients who had capital gains within the last year. The service is completely free of charge and is conducted only by trained volunteers. Clients find out about the service through advertising in print media and on Capital Metro buses, through visible signs on major thoroughfares, and through the center’s direct outreach it conducts through churches and other nonprofit community organizations.

Last year, CTC in Austin put nearly $10 million in the form of tax refunds and credits back into the hands of the Austin community and served more than 7,400 people. In 2006, the center helped more than 10,000 people garner nearly $13 million in tax savings.

Blake Udall, an MPA student and volunteer team leader, has worked with similar programs before and sees multiple benefits.

“Once you get through all the paperwork, certification and training, and you get to interact with people, you realize what a benefit you are to them,” says Udall. “Most people don’t have any idea what’s available to them regarding tax returns, or even where to start. They’re so surprised. That’s a good feeling.”

Zachary Hollinshead, another MPA student enrolled in the class, agrees. “Any low-income family can have their taxes prepared and be sure that we are saving them as much as any other tax services would without charging them hundreds of dollars,” he says.

Before earning course credit for volunteer hours, each student must register with CTC as a volunteer, complete a three-hour training session conducted by CTC and an eight-hour tax law and software training session, and become a certified tax preparer.

Students say the reactions from the families they help make the training worthwhile.

“I like to get out of my college bubble by meeting people outside of my typical surroundings,” says Johanna Yu, a management senior. “Sometimes the participants ask other financial questions, like how to mortgage a home and how they can save more money in the future.” Yu says she even helped one client set up a bank account.

Even when the students aren’t out working in the community, they are still exposed to perspectives on the state of socio-economic forces in Austin and the nation. In the classroom, guest lecturers address topics, such as demographics, immigration, public policy, economic development, the role of corporations in the community, the inner-workings of the IRS and ethics.

The practicum brings speakers from all areas of knowledge to speak to the students about how they can best serve their clients. A few of the speakers included Ryan Robinson, the demographer for the City of Austin, who discussed Austin’s changing demographics; Roy Sosa, the founder and CEO of NetSpend, who talked about alternatives available to unbanked members of society; and Maria Mondragon, senior associate advocate for the Taxpayer Advocate Service—an independent group within the IRS that helps taxpayers with special cases. Mondragon emphasized how taxpayers can only know about the Taxpayer Advocate Service if the people filing the taxes tell their clients about it.

“You guys are the future in this,” Mondragon said to the class. “We’re here so that you can help spread the word.”

At the beginning of each class, the graduate students, who acted as team leaders, led small groups of undergraduates in a discussion about the previous week’s guest speaker to prepare for an upcoming quiz.

The graduate students also gathered student-written questions for the current week’s speaker and helped answer any questions that the undergraduates may have had.

“The responsibilities of team leadership provided the perfect opportunity for graduate students to have an experience distinct from their undergraduate colleagues. A lot was asked of the graduate students,” says Professor Steven Limberg, who also serves as the director of the MPA/PPA program at McCombs.

When students are on the field at CTC, they are evaluated on quality of work, effectiveness with clients, team contributions, quality of interaction with site colleagues and reliability.

Overall, about 40 percent of a student’s grade depends on the evaluation of his or her work with others.

Drew Murray, former volunteer coordinator for CTC, is enthusiastic about the program.

“We’ve been very happy with the students’ performance as volunteers,” Murray says. “They bring a lot of energy and a fresh perspective, which is great when you are doing something like preparing taxes—it can be a pretty boring ordeal.”

Murray also appreciates that the students don’t have much experience in preparing taxes because they are more willing to adapt to changes in tax regulations than the veteran tax preparers.

“The people with the most experience tend to get set in certain ruts, which can be detrimental because the tax laws change from year to year,” Murray says. “We serve people who are not necessarily used to receiving a good level of service in lots of different places in their lives. They’ve been through tough times with institutions dealing with public health and housing.”

While tax season can be another stressful time, being able to sit with somebody who is positive about this type of work can relieve that anxiety, he adds.

“It’s a difficult process,” Murray says. “Students and volunteers in general are able to show people through one-on-one interaction that there’s someone who cares enough about them to show them through it.”