Episode 38: JOCO VITA - Free Tax Preparation Services for Southern Oregon
Host: Jamie Callahan
Guest: Kathie Sauders, JOCO VITA
JAMIE CALLAHAN: Hi, this is Jamie Callahan with the Team Senior Podcast. Our goal is to simplify aging. Society grooms us to plan for retirement, but what about life beyond retirement, where the rubber meets the road? Perhaps you've had a stroke, or you've been diagnosed with cancer, or maybe you're forgetting things and now you have dementia. That's our area of expertise, and we are here to share our insight.
And now, the Team Senior Podcast.
Hi there. It's Jamie Callahan with the Team Senior Podcast. I am super excited to be back in the studio today with Kathie with JOCO VITA. We talked with them a little bit in the fall about services that they provide completely for free in tax preparation. Kathie, welcome back today.
KATHIE SAUDERS: Thank you very much for having us again.
JAMIE: Oh, you are so welcome. So I want to jump right into this. Talk to us about JOCO VITA. I know you're a nonprofit, I know you do free taxes. Tell us more.
KATHIE: Gosh, we've been around this county for, it seems like forever. I've been with the program for over 39 years, and it's a wonderful program. And people wonder why I keep giving my time away, but it's so gratifying, and we just love to help people for free to get their income taxes done and save people lots and lots of money.
JAMIE: It's so awesome. That's the big word, right? That's the word everybody wants to hear—free. I absolutely love that you guys are able to do that. Tell me, approximately, how many taxes do you think you prepare for folks on an annual basis?
KATHIE: In the past, before COVID interrupted everything, we were really up in the 2,000s for numbers of returns prepared. Last year, we prepared about 1,400, which is still a very good number for this county.
JAMIE: Wow.
KATHIE: I would say so.
JAMIE: That's a lot of taxes. Oh yeah. Oh my goodness. That's something I really hate doing. So that number sounds very alarming to me. But congratulations to JOCO VITA for taking care of 1,400 different people. Speaking of taking care of people, what types of folks can use your service?
KATHIE: Our service is open to practically anyone. Our primary focus is senior and low-income, but we really want to encourage families and students and others to avail themselves of our services because we can really help practically anybody. And it's a wonderful savings.
JAMIE: Yeah, that's wonderful. I can't say congratulations to not just Josephine County, but also JOCO VITA for being able to pick this up and actually provide such an amazing service. I know from doing a little bit of my own research that your volunteers are IRS-certified, and we know that's really important, right? You're not just walking into somebody's living room that is a volunteer and has decided to prepare taxes. Tell us about the qualification process.
KATHIE: All of our volunteers are required to go through an IRS-prescribed test, and they certify to what IRS calls the advanced level, which means that we can prepare taxes all the way up to retirement brokerage statements, different things like that. Our program is not qualified, however, to provide full-blown business returns. The small business, the lawnmower, the handyman—those kinds of things we can help. The babysitters. We also cannot do rentals.
JAMIE: Oh. Okay.
KATHIE: Yeah.
JAMIE: That's good to know. Yeah. All right. So I would be very curious to know—I know you've been with the organization for a long time—so maybe share a story of your own and maybe a story of somebody else's if you have them. What are some of the most rewarding moments that you've had that you or maybe some of your volunteers have had in helping folks to prepare their taxes for free?
KATHIE: There are so many different times that we have had people come to us, and maybe in a previous year they had gone to someone else and paid to have their services provided. And when we are looking over—we always ask them to bring the previous year's return just for a history—and when we look over their information, we discover, "Oh my, there were some benefits that you were not given." And so we can bring your refunds from just a few hundred dollars to a few thousand dollars.
JAMIE: That's amazing.
KATHIE: And we have done previously our amended returns just to correct those situations for folks. We try to stay abreast of all of the benefits that are available to the low-income and to the families and that kind of thing that many times people aren't aware of in the big box kind of preparing situations.
JAMIE: What a tremendous benefit to folks that are low-income. Everybody, especially these days, we can all use every single extra dollar that we can get. You're doing so many amazing things already. I'm curious to know, is JOCO VITA expanding services beyond tax help anytime in the future?
KATHIE: This past year, we applied for and received the 501(c)(3) designation. And as a result, we're hoping that we will be able to get grant funding from the IRS that we can utilize to expand on what we've been doing. So far, we've been dependent on organizations—other organizations locally—to sponsor us and provide us with spaces and supplies and things like that. And we ran into a big glitch last year with that and had to scramble for some additional sponsorships. And so that's why we applied for our own designation. So now we can apply for grants through the IRS and hopefully expand on that.
JAMIE: That was a great idea. I'm sure you'll get it based on all of the good work that you're already doing. Looking ahead in the next few years, if you could identify a dream—you've been with the organization for so long—what is your dream for JOCO VITA?
KATHIE: To have a longstanding space where we can provide this year after year and not confuse people by flitting around town like we've had to do frequently in the past. And just generally expanding the services throughout the year so that folks who have letters that they receive off-season, and different people who have a problem with past taxes—they haven't been filing—that we can do all that kind of stuff off-season for them.
JAMIE: That's awesome. Kathie, do you have anything else you want to share today?
KATHIE: We're hoping to get a program where we can help educate people about all of these new laws that have just come down this year with the big, beautiful bill. And so hopefully stay in tune and look at our website, and we'll have information about that.
JAMIE: Yeah, that would be great. This is definitely a community that really appreciates education, and if there's anything that we can do to support you in that, you just reach out to us and we'll definitely make that happen. I want to close with sharing contact information for JOCO VITA, and I just want to share one more time that this is a free tax preparation service that is available to folks in Southern Oregon. You can reach them at jocovita.org. So it's J-O-C-O-V-I-T-A.org. Again, jocovita.org. And if you would prefer to call them rather than going on to their website, you can reach out at 541-223-9597. Again, 541-223-9597. And like anything, if you ever need something and you can't remember the name of an organization, but you remember somewhere in the back of your head that there's free tax preparation somewhere, just call us at Team Senior. We'll help you with whatever it is that you need. We'll get you connected to Kathie and her wonderful team right away. Kathie, thank you so much for being in the studio today. We really appreciate it.
KATHIE: Thank you very much for having us.
JAMIE: You got it. Have a great day.
KATHIE: Thank you.
JAMIE: Thank you for listening to the Team Senior Podcast. We're here every week sharing new and relevant information. Remember that we're just a phone call away. Team Senior can be reached at 541-295-8230. Again, 541-295-8230. Until next time, this is Jamie Callahan.
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