A tax time hero celebrates 25 years of volunteering with VITA
For Alice Braswell, tax time isn’t a season to dread, but a highlight of the year. Twenty-five years ago, she went from just filing her own taxes to helping more than 1,000 people file their taxes safely and securely each year.
“It must be that adrenaline that we all have around filing taxes, and it keeps us coming back year after year,” she said. For her, the rush comes with helping members of her community save as much as they can.
Alice first learned about VITA, our Volunteer Income Tax Assistance program, through a radio advertisement in the 1990s. She had taken a few accounting classes in college, and had experience doing her personal taxes. After hearing the VITA ad, she jumped at the chance to ensure even more of her community members got the help they needed come tax time.
Alice went through tax law certification training offered through the United Way VITA team and began volunteering as a preparer at the Scott Candler Library. She became an assistant site coordinator in 2006. In 2021, she started leading the VITA site at St. Philip AME Church.
From paper returns to “Leave and Retrieve”
“I remember when I first started, we prepared the returns on paper. They were handwritten using carbon to make the copies,” she remembered. “It was a challenge, but I liked what I was doing. It was beneficial, doing a service to the community.”
Today, United Way offers Greater Atlanta taxpayers 40 different VITA locations to choose from. Options include classic sites where you can sit with the preparer every step of the way, 100% virtual tax preparation, ESOL sites where translation is available, and even “Leave and Retrieve” sites like St. Philip AME, the site that Alice coordinates, where you can drop off your documents and come back later once the service is complete to save time.
Each site is staffed by a team of dedicated volunteers who walk taxpayers through filing step by step.
“They always ask, ‘Is this really free?’”
On Alice’s team at St. Philip, volunteers welcome about 20 taxpayers from the surrounding community at their intake appointments, and on Saturdays that number doubles. Many people who come still can’t believe the program is free.
“We stopped in at a tax place nearby before this, and they just charged us too much. And AARP has a service, but we needed to meet the DeKalb County deadline for property taxes,” Darryl Jones said while waiting for his intake form appointment at St. Philip. This is his first year filing taxes at a United Way VITA site.
While he appreciated the easy process, the part that drew him in was that it was free, no strings attached. “Taxes are just too much to try to figure out on your own,” he said.
Jim Carlisle, volunteer with VITA since 2019 at St. Philip, commented that Alice has a way of easing the worries of people who come in with stress about the process. “She calm[s] people down and lets them know that this is a process that’s helpful to them and they take the stress out of the situation for them right away, actually.”
“We’re not the only tax service out here,” said Alice, “but we volunteer our time, and we are here for our community. The people come in here and they always ask, ‘is this really free?’ Yes, we are!”
$15 million in tax savings — and counting
Every year, United Way’s VITA program helps the Greater Atlanta community generate cost savings in both the filing fees themselves and in the refunds that many taxpayers find out they are eligible for. The preparers are trained to help taxpayers claim credits that they may have not even realized they were eligible for, for example the Earned Income Tax Credit (EITC).
“We have some that do qualify for the EITC refund — they’ve used it to purchase a home or start a savings account, purchase a car,” said Alice. “It’s a great benefit to the community and the surrounding communities for people to come in and get their taxes prepared free.”
Last year alone, we helped Atlanta taxpayers get $11.2 million in tax refunds and save $3.5 million in tax prep fees across our VITA sites.
“Programs like this are incredibly important to help people ensure that they are economically safe and secure,” said United Way of Greater Atlanta President and CEO Milton Little. “We help people get every deduction, every bit of cash they are due because it’s important for them to be able to make decisions that are appropriate for them and their families, to be able to buy food, to be able to pay for their homes, to be able to pay for the car that gets them to and from work.”
About 70% of Americans qualify for free filing, but only 3% actually use this service – check your eligibility to file your taxes with VITA at unitedwayatlanta.org/program/vita.
It takes a team of dedicated volunteers like Alice to make sure our neighbors get every dollar they’re due come tax time. Help us continue to reach more taxpayers by donating today!