By Staff Reports
(Hawaii)– Leeward Community College’s Volunteer Income Tax Assistance (VITA) Program has provided free, live tax preparation services for the past 30 years ranging from low-tech carbon paper copies to our now cloud-based computing. Individuals or families with total combined income under $58,000 and have online access with their own computers, can now prepare and file their own federal and state returns using our program’s FREE MyFreeTaxes.com site.
Most other freefile sites (http://www.irs.gov/uac/Free-File:-Do-Your-Federal-Taxes-for-Free) will charge for state tax returns, but MyFreeTaxes is free for both federal and state. You can file electronically or print and mail in your returns. Instead of having refund checks mailed to you an option is to have your refunds direct deposited into your bank account within 10 days of electronically filing.
Any qualifying taxpayer can use this service for which our VITA program will get credit. The website will guide you through a simple interview process. You can stop at any time and continue later. Tax and technical questions can be answered with their hotline. You can contact Roy Kamida (kamida@hawaii.edu, 455-0294) for more information.
Volunteers will be available to assist taxpayers every:
- Tuesdays and Thursdays from February 4 through March 21, 1:30pm to 5:30pm
- Saturdays from February 1 to March 29, 9am to 1pm (doors close at noon)
Details on documents needed for in-person assistance are listed online.
The VITA Program is part of Leeward’s “Get Job Ready: Celebrating National CTE Month.”