The Paul M. Hebert Law Center is offering federal and state tax assistance to international students and residents this month with the Volunteer Income Tax Assistance program. The University’s Payroll Department proposed the VITA program to the Law School in 1999 because the University has many international students, professors and researchers who must file their taxes differently from U.S. citizens. The program prepared about 320 tax returns for people from 50 different countries last year. “There are plenty of places for low-income U.S. taxpayers to get help in Baton Rouge and on the main campus, but we’re the only place where foreign students, foreign teachers and foreign researchers can get help,” said Susan Kalinka, law professor and VITA coordinator. Kalinka said international residents must file taxes specific to the treaties and provisions of their home country. The program will be open in the Law School’s first-floor lobby every Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday from 6 p.m. to 8 p.m. “The earlier in the month they can come, the better because we have a system, and we limit the number of people we help to 50 per night because we know we can get that many done,” Kalinka said. Brad Tate, second-year law student and VITA supervising coordinator, said the amount of tax returns prepared each night depends on how many volunteers are available and how many people attend the program. Kalinka said people who are unable to be assisted the night they attend the program are given a number to be assisted the next night. The volunteers prepared about 30 tax returns in about two and a half hours Tuesday evening, the first night of this year’s program. Tate said volunteers assisted people from countries including India, China and Uruguay. “The students get faster at filling in the returns as they get more experienced,” Kalinka said. Kalinka said people who want assistance with their tax returns should bring their visa, passport and copies of their W-2 or 1042-S forms. They should also bring their 2005 federal income tax return if they filed last year. Kalinka trains the program’s volunteers, who are all law students, vigorously to learn how to prepare the tax returns. She prepares a comprehensive manual each year with the tax rules for each country. “I generate a lot of material for my students,” she said. The training sessions for first-time volunteers last about an hour and a half. Kalinka reviews the general rules about tax returns, and the volunteers fill in sample tax forms to get hands-on experience. Veteran volunteers called supervising coordinators meet with Kalinka several times to review more complicated tax returns and questions. “The people that we help who have relatively easy returns, we send them to the first-time volunteers and then the ones with the harder issues on their tax returns, those go to the more experienced students,” Kalinka said. “And then if there are still questions, my students will call me at home, and I’ll answer the questions. So we have all kinds of back-ups to make sure everything that we do is correct.” Kalinka said most of the volunteers return to help the next year. “Once a student has participated in the program, they usually want to participate the next year because they had such a good experience,” she said. Tate said he volunteers at the program because he enjoys assisting people with their tax returns. He said he plans to practice in a tax-related field after he graduates from law school. Some restrictions apply. “For students, it doesn’t matter how long they’ve been in the United States, we can help them,” Kalinka said. “But for people who are not students, if they first came into the United States in 2005 or first came into the United States in 2006, we can help them.” Kalinka said non-students from foreign countries who entered the United States before 2005 are considered U.S. citizens.
—–Contact Angelle Barbazon at [email protected]