QUINCY, ILL. -- It's tax season once again and that means you need to start thinking about W-2s, 1099s, taxable income and earned income tax credits.
Many of those terms can get confusing.
And now there's a program being offered by the United Way of Adams County that can help some people file the proper tax forms.
It's call VITA, which stands for Volunteer Income Tax Assistance.
At the United Way office in Quincy, Stephanie Erwin is busy getting ready to help people who have scheduled appointments through the VITA program. Erwin knows her way around tax forms and making sure people fill out the right ones for Uncle Sam.
"All returns are reviewed a second time before they are electronically filed, so we have a good checks and balances. The volunteers again are certified because we want to make sure they are receiving quality service. So there's a lot of things like that, that we make sure them coming in, that they have the confidence that we're going an accurate return for them," Erwin said.
There aren't a lot of changes in this years tax code. But one thing that many people were holding their breath on was the permanent continuation of the Alternative Minimum Tax.
Tera Schultz is a tax specialist with H & R Block and she's been preparing taxes for the last six years. She said if it would have been discontinued, it could have had a major impact on families across the U.S.
"Had it gone into effect, it would have affected about 30 million families in the U.S. And it would have drastically changed the way their taxes were filed," Schultz said.
Erwin said since VITA started back in 2007, they've been able to help about 18 hundred families in the Adams County area and they've been able to get about $2.5 million in either refunds or tax credits. They're expecting to help about 550 families this year.
Appointments are being made for the VITA program in Quincy and in Hannibal.
You can call your local United Way office for more information. Find your local office here.
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