At UtahTaxHelp.org, Free Means Free

April 15th is around the corner. And many Utah tax filers are anxious to get their refunds back fast. But don’t fall prey to tax filing schemes or hidden fees offered by many paid preparers — including the three largest tax preparation chains. Here are three ways to avoid hidden tax filing fees:

1. File your state and federal taxes 100% free with qualified IRS-certified volunteer tax preparers.
The average Utah tax filer pays $211 to file their taxes — for one third of Utah tax filers, that’s approximately 12% of their monthly income — income which instead could buy a three month supply of diapers, a car payment or a college semester’s worth of books. Beware of hidden charges some paid preparers disguise as “application,” “administrative,” “e-filing,” “processing,” “service bureau” or “transmission” fees. Other paid  preparers may offer free state tax filing but catch you unawares by charging for federal tax filing. Remember: if it’s not zero dollars, it’s not free. At UtahTaxHelp.org, free means free. No hidden fees.

2. Don’t pay a fee to get your own money.
Other tricky tactics used by some paid preparers include charging you to get the credits you deserve; the more forms they fill out to get those credits for you, the more they charge. Many of these valuable credits mean real money to Utah tax filers, like the EITC or Earned Income Tax Credit. For those Utahns who qualify, the average EITC is $2100 — that’s approximately 10% of the annual income for one third of Utah tax filers! UtahTaxHelp.org‘s qualified IRS-certified volunteer tax preparers are dedicated to making sure that you get all the credits you deserve, 100% free, with no form-filing fee. After all, it’s your money! It should go back in your pocket, free of charge.

3. Avoid refund loan, check and bank account scams.
The IRS has cracked down on many refund anticipation loans and checks (temporary loans of your money at typically 35% to 500% interest). But many paid preparers are disguising them under new names, like “personal line of credit.” In addition to sky-high interest, these scams are often rife with other “transmittal” or “access” fees. Other paid preparers falsely claim that a bank account is required in order for you to receive your refund, then charge you a fee to open one; even if you don’t have a bank account, you’re entitled to receive your full refund by mail — and you don’t have to pay to get it. UtahTaxHelp.org will help you get your money fast and safely — without any sneaky fees.

UtahTaxHelp.org is a statewide initiative powered by Community Action Partnership of Utah, a nonprofit dedicated to providing tax help you can trust. Call 2-1-1 for more information or visit UtahTaxHelp.org to file your taxes for free — online or in person at one of 90 locations throughout Utah. At UtahTaxHelp.org, free means free.

Hello! My name is Afton January and I am one of the two newest members of the CAP Utah team. I am so excited to be here! I’ll be filling the position of Agency Support Coordinator, replacing the role that Tim Jackson held in supporting the Community Action Agencies, spearheading the Poverty Simulations, and planning the Annual Conference.

Some Background on Me:
Though I originally hail from California’s Bay Area, I grew up in one of Utah’s most beautiful and unique rural communities, the Uintah Basin. I’m a graduate of Union High School in Roosevelt and the University of Utah (Go Utes!). I completed my bachelor’s degree in Gender Studies with a minor in Theatre Arts in 2007. The Gender Studies program at the U is exceptional, and I credit it with providing me the motivation I needed to pursue a career in social justice work. I didn’t just study feminism and the science behind gender and sexuality, but a whole spectrum of issues that get to the heart of the institutional and intersecting nature of privilege and oppression – particularly class and race.

During college, I interned with the Utah Pride Center, Utah’s LGBT community center. It was a transformative experience for me because it launched my career and solidified my interest in the nonprofit sector. I then went to work for I.J. & Jeanné Wagner Jewish Community Center and eventually ended up at the Utah Housing Coalition, where I worked for the past four years to promote sustainable homeownership programs, coordinated conferences and seminars for professionals working in the affordable housing industry, and planned community fairs geared toward connecting low-income Utahns with vital services and resources.

I am currently pursuing a Master’s degree in Public Administration at the University of Utah. When I’m not at work or school, I enjoy loafing around the house, watching bad TV, and spending time outdoors with my husband Martin and our dog Molly (a good natured 8-month old Mini-Pinscher Shih Tzu mix). I’m known for my sense of humor and my strong interest in politics among my friends and colleagues.

I am thrilled be starting my new adventure with CAP Utah. I am passionate about this work because I truly believe that we can end poverty in Utah. Yes, poverty in Utah is real. But it doesn’t have to be.

Denver G. Olmstead

Democracy doesn’t end once the ballot is printed: candidates chosen. It’s an active process, taking place in every city, in every town, constantly adapting to the needs of the people. Democracy is a daily process of citizens interacting with their representatives, discussing and voicing concerns.

Fighting a hefty snowstorm, over 150 constituents from across the state of Utah, arrived 8:00 a.m., January 30^th on Salt Lake City’s Capital Hill to participate in democracy. Collaborating with AARP Utah, Community Action Partnership of Utah invited citizens and legislature representatives to communicate together in the hope of demystifying the political process.

Within a dominantly republican state, the sixth annual Democracy Day held a mock debate between Chairmen Jim Dabakis (D) and Thomas Wright (R). Each presented the differing views held by the two parties on issues currently in discussion by state citizens, including education and air quality in Utah. While their views were different, each Chairman showed a willingness to reach across party lines with laughter and a bit of friendly banter. Democracy Day is a time to show that political representatives are accessible to talk and listen to each person’s concerns. All it takes is a voice and the mere action of introducing yourself.

CAP Utah’s Executive Director, Paul Leggett, discusses the importance of the day, “We envision a Utah where economic access and opportunity is equal for all. A big part of this is helping people have their voice be heard in the legislative process, to not be intimidated by their representatives and to realize their perspective and opinion should be heard.”

Though sometimes, it’s not the individual, but the large looming building on the hill that has people intimidated and mystified by politics. After a day of debates, lectures and talks, participants were invited to tour the capital with docents so they might feel more comfortable the next time they step through Democracy’s doors. Following tours, participants were invited to lunch with their representatives to voice issues or praise to House and Senate legislatures.

Democracy Day has become an annual event hosted by Community Action Partnership of Utah. Its success is thanks to collaboration and partnerships with other groups.

Hello and happy Election Day! My name is Maryguenn Vellinga and I am the latest addition to the Cap Utah team.  I will be working along side Jacob Brinkerhoff as a Policy Analyst for the next six months. I am passionate about the social political issues CAP Utah addresses and am thrilled at the opportunity to work through the upcoming legislative session and with other community partners. I will work with steadfast determination to do the best I can for CAP Utah and the greater community.

I was fortunate to have a very diverse cultural and economic experience as a child. I spent my childhood pondering inequalities, politics and how government creates infrastructures to deal with them. And yes, infrastructure was probably in my vocabulary long before I knew who Elmo was.  My mother, a daughter of an AIG insurance lawyer, grew up very wealthy in Central and South America. Her father was raised in China, also the son of an International Law Attorney. I had a vague understanding that my grandfather’s family left China because of political tension, and that thirty years later he fled Cuba with his own young family for similar reasons; something to do with communism, being American, and war. Ultimately they would land in Guatemala, where my mother was raised. I heard stories about government, politics, culture and poverty in China, Cuba, Venezuela and Guatemala that gave me a yearning to see poverty first hand.  She impressed upon me daily that I didn’t understand poverty and that Americans weren’t poor; compared to my peers though, I knew we were.

My father and mother divorced while I was still a toddler. My mother worked tirelessly to support our family but she also required that my three older siblings and I contribute. I had a newspaper route at the age of 6 and did yard work for neighbors during the summers. My mom started a watermelon farm on the south end of Utah Lake to supplement our income. I worked a few hours before school, after school and long hours through the summer. Farming is hard work. We had a small crew of migrant farm workers, high school kids and my siblings which made up my mom’s cheap labor force. I didn’t play much with friends and hid the amount of work I was required to do because it was so unlike their experiences. Despite that, I grew to love work, I grew to understand money, and I grew to understand people who work hard and still don’t live the life they deserve. I learned that you don’t have to live in a developing country to experience poverty, and that my mom’s reinforcement of my American privilege was not a guarantee for success.

Upon graduating from high school I dove into college and academia. I was hungry to learn and eager to experience the world. My studies made me more interested in travel and I began to rotate a semester of school with a semester of work in order to fund my travels abroad.  It took me ten years to complete my degree in International Studies, but I can say that I was educated as much by my experiences traveling internationally as I was through school.  After spending six months working at an orphanage in Honduras I came to realize that while direct work is necessary and rewarding, true change and progress had to come from a political and structural level. I realized that my whole life I had pondered the role of government in creating successful nations and people. I came back to the states, finished my degree and finally knew the direction I needed to go. After graduation I got a job with Salt Lake Cap as a Fiscal Assistant but knew I wanted to move to the policy side.

I am finally here. I have a lot still to learn but plan to channel my enthusiasm and compassion into this position to my fullest. I am proud and honored at the opportunity to work with CAP Utah towards making positive strides addressing the poverty issues in our state.

Let’s do this.

My name is Jacob Brinkerhoff and I too would like to extend a hearty hello to everyone reading out there in the CAP Utah blogosphere. It is with tremendous anticipation and excitement that I join the team here at the Community Action Partnership of Utah, as the new Policy Analyst. I understand that I have large shoes to fill in taking Drew Martinez’s place, and I hope that I am up to the task.

My passion for social justice began very early on, in fact, really as far back as I can remember, I have been troubled by poverty, hunger, injustice and inequality. I came to know poverty not just in the abstract from moving stories I read as a young man in books like Oliver Twist, and Native Son (my family did not own a television when I was growing up, which turned out to be a blessing in disguise because I became quite an avid reader very early on), but I also felt the sting of poverty personally in my own life at times. My father was an elementary school teacher and was the sole breadwinner in my family for most of my life. My parents felt it was best for my mother to stay in the home and to be there for me and my younger sisters and brother. When my father began teaching school in the Uintah Basin, where my mother had grown up, he found that he was teaching in the lowest paying district in the lowest paying state in the nation at that time. The first year my father taught school his salary was eight thousand dollars. He, of course, had to do other jobs in the summer and things on the side to support us. Nevertheless, finances were a tremendous source of stress in my family during my early childhood years. Things gradually got much better for us financially. My family has been truly blessed, but I still remember the stress and strain that poverty put on my parents’ relationship, and on my siblings and I emotionally as a young children. At that time in the rural Uintah Basin, poverty was fairly pervasive. I remember many elementary, junior high, and high school peers whose families struggled to put food on the table, provide school clothes, and keep their financial heads above water as it were.

Since growing up and leaving rural Northeastern Utah, I have had opportunities to live in a variety of locales around the U.S. and have witnessed poverty far too many times in this great nation of ours. I remember the sweet young woman who lived next door to me for several years who I observed working herself to the bone at three minimum wage part-time jobs only to just barely keep up with  bills, rent, and food… and the young mother I came to know, who got out of an abusive relationship only to find it was virtually impossible to find work and provide for her two young children on her own, since she had always been a stay-at-home mom and had little experience or training relevant for the job market. There have the numerous others whom I have witnessed suffering financial hardship at different times due economic downturns, or various other circumstances beyond their control. I have come to realize that such instances of financial crises befalling  valuable members of our communities are more common than we sometimes realize or care to admit. They are quite common even here in Utah – a place many of us our prone to thinking of as not having many of the problems that the rest of the world has. The harsh realities of these situations and their inexcusable frequency in our wealthy nation is what motivates me to work passionately towards the Community Action Partnership of Utah’s mission to eradicate poverty in our state.

I have also been a bit of a political creature for quite a number of years now. So this new policy analyst position is, I think, sort of perfect for me. I am currently thoroughly enjoying my master’s degree work in international affairs and global enterprise at the University of Utah.  I hope to one day take the knowledge and skills I develop here at CAP Utah and in my master’s program on to the international scene. Making the world a better place is what gets me out of bed in the morning!

Imagine going through a first and second interview for a job that is the beginning of your career. Now imagine getting a call on the Friday afternoon of your second interview. Furthermore, imagine having to answer a few more follow up questions over the phone while your heart is beating out of your chest. Ok, relax, you got the job. WAHOO! Now imagine trying to keep your composer while your boss tells you that your first week on the job will be in Washington DC at a national conference about asset building. Well that was my first experience with CAP Utah. I am writing about my first week on the job, the CFED “Ideas to Action” Asset building conference.

This conference was a wonderful way to kick off my time with CAP Utah. It was much better than coming to the office and going over HR details that typically bore me to death. The conference was informative, and I left even more motivated to start my new position. Let me highlight some of the things I took away from the conference.

Child Savings Accounts (CSA) is an important tool to create social behavioral change in regards to savings. The city of San Francisco started a program 3 years ago called “Kindergarten 2 College” (K2C). What the program does is start a savings account in the name of every kindergartner within the San Francisco Unified School District, with the amount of $50. This is an opt out program as opposed to an opt in program, making it easier for families to begin saving. The program has various incentive based variables attached to the account. They include incentives for attending financial education classes, match based incentives, and whether or not the child receives free or discounted lunch. I learned many new ideas to bring back to Utah to start here in our community.

Mayor Cory Booker of Newark is the man! That dude brought the house down at the lunch break on Thursday afternoon. He spoke of how the attendees at the conference were modern day freedom fighters helping those in need break the barriers of poverty. I overheard whispers of “he should run for president”. He gave a very powerful and motivational speech. I encourage everyone to check it out:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KiVJFhVZ42s&list=PLx69LxPJkxWeLi_eg97hkzVKItEYoQ3OL&index=2&feature=plcp

One final practice I took away from the conference was in regards to financial opportunity centers. These financial opportunity centers concentrate their efforts on building wealth through integrated services. The Community Action of Duluth provides bundled services around employment, financial, and income support. The outcomes showed that clients who used the bundled services that the center provides increase financial stability significantly.

The most important thing that I took away form this conference was the network of people who are willing to help get pilot programs up and running. Everyone was there to review best practices and to use those practices in their communities.  I am energized from the enthusiasm and commitment that the conference exhibited.

What a first week!