{"id":8185,"date":"2018-03-16T16:56:15","date_gmt":"2018-03-16T16:56:15","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/losfresnosnews.net\/?p=8185"},"modified":"2018-03-16T16:56:15","modified_gmt":"2018-03-16T16:56:15","slug":"aarp-program-provides-free-tax-assistance-for-texans","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/losfresnosnews.net\/?p=8185","title":{"rendered":"AARP Program Provides Free Tax Assistance for Texans"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"The<\/a>

The AARP Foundation\u2019s Tax-Aide Program is available at hundreds of sites across Texas to help low- and moderate-income people prepare income-tax returns. Photo: Logorko\/GettyImages<\/p><\/div>\n

by Mark Richardson<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n

FORT WORTH, Texas \u2013<\/strong>\u00a0If you haven\u2019t filed your income-tax return yet and need some help, don\u2019t worry \u2013 free, qualified assistance is available near you.<\/p>\n

The AARP Foundation\u2019s Tax-Aide Program offers no-cost services to low- and moderate-income Texans at hundreds of locations for help in preparing and filing federal tax returns.<\/p>\n

Bart Hatfield, an AARP volunteer who oversees the Tax-Aide program as its western regional coordinator in Texas, said people don\u2019t need to be AARP members to participate, so the program sees a wide variety of folks asking for help.<\/p>\n

\u201cPrimarily seniors and low-income [people] of all ages,\u201d said Hatfield. \u201cA lot of the folks that we serve have some more complicated parts of the law \u2013 like the ACA [Affordable Care Act] is very complicated, from a tax point of view. And then the older clients, how much of their Social Security is actually taxed? They\u2019re not always simple returns.\u201d<\/p>\n

Hatfield said Tax-Aide volunteers have set up shop at sites across the state, including neighborhood libraries, malls, banks, community centers and senior centers. Texas is so large that he explained Tax-Aide is broken up into four regions here: the Dallas-Fort Worth area, the Houston area, the Austin-San Antonio corridor and West Texas.<\/p>\n

Help is available in most of the towns and cities in each area.<\/p>\n

Last year, more than 2,000 Tax-Aide volunteers helped 162,000 Texans get their income taxes done. But Hatfield pointed out that people need to bring all the necessary documents to their appointment to prepare their returns.<\/p>\n

\u201cThey need to bring a picture ID and Social Security cards for everybody who\u2019s on the return,\u201d he said. \u201cThey also need to bring all their tax documents \u2013 their W-2s, 1099-Rs, Social Security statements, all those things. It\u2019s also nice if they bring the previous year\u2019s return.\u201d<\/p>\n

The Tax-Aide volunteers are trained by the Internal Revenue Service. And while they don\u2019t handle returns with business expenses, home offices or depreciation tables, Hatfield said they are able to handle most other situations.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe important thing is that we\u2019re certified, and we do quality reviews,\u201d he added. \u201cIn other words, every return is looked at twice. And that\u2019s why we have over a 95-percent accuracy rate for our returns \u2013 quality over quantity.\u201d<\/p>\n

This year\u2019s tax deadline is April 17. To find a Tax-Aide site in your area, look online at\u00a0aarp.org\/findtaxhelp<\/a>\u00a0or call 1-888-AARP-NOW (1-888-227-7669).<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

by Mark Richardson FORT WORTH, Texas \u2013\u00a0If you haven\u2019t filed your income-tax return yet and need some help, don\u2019t worry \u2013 free, qualified assistance is available near you. The AARP Foundation\u2019s Tax-Aide Program offers no-cost services to low- and moderate-income Texans at hundreds of locations for help in preparing and filing federal tax returns. Bart […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":8186,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[13],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-8185","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-state"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/losfresnosnews.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8185","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/losfresnosnews.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/losfresnosnews.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/losfresnosnews.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/losfresnosnews.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=8185"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/losfresnosnews.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8185\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":8187,"href":"https:\/\/losfresnosnews.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8185\/revisions\/8187"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/losfresnosnews.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/8186"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/losfresnosnews.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=8185"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/losfresnosnews.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=8185"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/losfresnosnews.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=8185"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}