WFU professor, students help local residents file taxes

Accounting students at Wake Forest University will offer free tax-filing assistance to local residents beginning Feb. 1 at the Joblink Lab located in the Goodwill Industries building at 2701 University Parkway. The Wake Forest site will operate every Tuesday in February and March from 4 – 6 p.m.

Yvonne Hinson, PricewaterhouseCoopers Faculty Fellow and associate professor of accountancy in Wake Forest’s Calloway School of Business and Accountancy, will direct the Wake Forest site. Hinson has been instrumental in organizing the effort, which operates as part of the Forsyth Working Families Partnership. The partnership is a group of local non-profit organizations that helps low-income residents take advantage of tax credits by preparing their tax returns and showing them how to use the refunded money to build assets or buy a first home. One credit the partnership looks for is the Earned Income Tax Credit (EITC), an often unclaimed tax refund available to working families with incomes of around $34,000 or less.

Last year, the Wake Forest group assisted around 132 residents and returned between $40,000 and $50,000 in earned income tax credits and over $110,000 in total refunds to local taxpayers. It is estimated that nearly $12 million in unclaimed tax credits are available to Forsyth County residents.

Categories: Community, Events