We decided to try holding a
different kind of community outreach this year – a free community tax
clinic. We have a number of accountants in our assembly, so we organized
a tax clinic to help people with simple tax returns and modest incomes prepare
their returns.
Canada Revenue Agency (CRA) has a
program called the Community Volunteer Income Tax Preparation (CVITP) where
they help community organizations set up and run such clinics. We
registered with CRA to sponsor a clinic, and advertised our clinic on the CRA website,
as well as on our hall website and on Kijiji and a website called
comefromchina for new Chinese immigrants. We also posted notices about
the clinic in a nearby community centre. CRA provides training, and
access to free software to use in preparing the returns. At first the
registration was slow and we wondered if we would have any returns to prepare,
but by the time the clinic date arrived, we were full. We learned that it
was important to have a phone number for registration rather than just an email
address, and we had someone look after booking the appointments when people
called.
We ran our clinic on a Saturday from
noon until 5 pm. We set up a wifi connection at the hall so that we could
electronically file the returns on the spot. We booked appointments for
every half hour, and our four tax preparers prepared about 30 tax
returns. Most of the people we helped live in the community around the
hall, and for all of them, it was the first time they had ever been in the
building. We had a couple of people staffing a reception desk, and we
served people coffee and snacks while they waited their turn. It was
interesting to watch them reading the texts on the wall. Some of them
asked questions about the hall while we prepared their taxes.
The people who came seemed to really
appreciate the help. We gave them an information sheet to let them know
about the regular Sunday night gospel meeting at the hall and our ESL class, as
well as upcoming events such as a clothing give-away and a gospel supper.
Overall we were very happy with the
response. It is quite a bit of work to set up and requires commitment
from a number of people to run smoothly, but it brought many new contacts into
the hall for the first time, and provided a way of doing good and helping the
community.
For more information email Ken Kember
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