Seventeen Montco students enrolled in various business and accounting programs offered to help their fellow students with preparing, reviewing and filing forms for the 2019 tax season.

Student Support Services Specialist Mary Ellen Glick brought the Volunteer Income Tax Assistance Program to campus with help from the Campaign for Working Families. The VITA program provides assistance with tax return preparation for lower income community members.

The program ran from Feb. 4 through April 9 in the Student Success Center in College Hall on Montco’s Central Campus in Blue Bell. Sessions were held Mondays from 4-7 p.m. and Tuesdays from 5-8 p.m.

“This is a partnership between Student Services and Academic Affairs,” Mary Ellen Glick said. “When accounting students help other students with their tax filings, we have opportunity to tether service learning to actual classwork.”

Assistant Professor of Accounting Heather Thomas coordinated the student volunteers who have been recommended by Montco Accounting professors. The students who volunteered were required to go through the basic tax accounting certification process so that they could work on the tax filings.

“The students put in a lot of work,” noted Thomas. “Each student had to study the materials and pass a certification exam in order to participate. The students spent an average of 13 hours training and certifying over the winter break, then attended an orientation session in January.”

Students with a basic certification were able to input the filing information which then needed to be checked by a supervisor. While volunteering, students also had the opportunity to work toward an advanced certification as well.

Students Alex Carr, Marco Centanni, Eric Chen, Loymi Peralta Cruz, Valentin Gheorghe, Justin Guerrinni, Stephenie Kern, Barbara Kroupa, May Moc, Wun No, Danielle Pearson, Matthew Schwenk, Benjamin Smith, Justin Ziegler and Jessica Zuczek each spent four hours, one night every week for nine weeks during tax season.

“The students are really excited to be helping out,” Glick commented, which was a sentiment that the students echoed.

 Stefanie Kern of Norristown had not had much classwork involving tax accounting as a Business Administration student, but she enjoyed the volunteer work.

“I like that I am learning outside of class,” she explained. “This is good additional experience on top of the Business Administration classes I’ve taken.”

“Helping other students like this is a great experience for me,” said Accounting major Ben Smith of Telford. “I am applying what I learned in my Tax Accounting class, and it feels great to help other students who might not have access to professional tax filing services.”