Taxes and tips
Mizzou faculty and students provide financial advice
It’s easy to get lost in the alphabet soup of the tax code. As April 15 approaches, otherwise intelligent people may find themselves having trouble knowing what’s what between a W-2, a 1040, a 1040EZ or an R2D2.
That’s why students in Mizzou’s Department of Personal Financial Planning (in the College of Human Environmental Sciences) offer their assistance. Through University of Missouri Extension and the department’s Community Agencies and Volunteerism course, trained students help low- and moderate-income taxpayers complete tax forms and file returns. (See below for site information.)
“Extension sees this as a way to get people into the University setting, provide some tax assistance and then give them some financial education that they might not be able to get otherwise,” says Andrew Zumwalt, an extension associate who directs the program. Zumwalt says that the program helped prepare 880 returns with total refunds of about $650,000 in 2006 for students and community members.
Mark Oleson, who directs the Office for Financial Success, adds that it benefits the student volunteers, too: “It’s nice for students to sit across from a real person with real issues rather than just a case study out of a book.”
Beyond tax season, the Office for Financial Success offers other helpful advice. Oleson has developed two Freddie Mac-award-winning programs. The first is the Financial Tip of the Week blog, which delivers information on student loan changes, debt avoidance and other subjects that affect everyday life in college but that students might not know about.
The second is the one-credit Financial Survival class, which helps students plan for healthy finances and avoid financial traps. The class is offered each semester and during the summer. The class and the blog are based on the fact that college students are targets — for credit card companies, for financial scams and for all kinds of “special offers” that could lead to money troubles.
Both programs and other related services such as financial counseling offer sound advice that might not be available otherwise. “It allows students to be more trusting of information because it’s coming from a University source,” Oleson says.
Location for tax assistance
Office for Financial Success
61 Stanley Hall (Mizzou campus)
4:30 to 8 p.m. Tuesdays and Wednesdays, 10 a.m. to 1:30 p.m. Saturdays
Call 573-884-1690 for more information.
Site closed March 24 through April 1 for Spring Break.
Volunteer tax preparer and student Kyle Wells asks for advice from site manager Shelly Worden while helping student Matt Land with his tax return. Photos by James Yates.