The tax clinic is an initiative that the Sprott Tax Students’ Association (STSA) runs every year to assist Carleton students file their income tax returns.The tax clinic has three goals:
- Provide free tax filing assistance: Many students are intimidated by filing their tax returns and benefit from having the help of a student preparer. Making the tax filing process simpler for students allows more students to get their refunds and other benefits they are entitled to.
- Give student tax preparers relevant experience: Accounting students who volunteer for the tax clinic gain relevant experience for their careers through the tax clinic’s training on how to prepare returns, the experience they gain dealing with real-life clients, and the networking opportunities they get with the local tax accountants who volunteer with the clinic.
- Community Impact: New this year for the tax clinic is our hopes to expand our services to not just the Carleton community but to those who could benefit from this free tax service in the Ottawa region.
All funds raised will be spent on clinic expenses, such as:
- Printer ink, USBs, paper: Various items need to be printed throughout the tax clinic’s run to adhere to all tax filing guidelines for volunteer organizations.
- Volunteer expenses: The CRA has a requirement that certain classes of volunteers get a police records check before they can electronically access taxpayer information through AutoFill My Return (AFR). The tax clinic would pay for these police records checks when necessary for the volunteer’s position. The tax clinic also provides training sessions for volunteers with food being the primary cost for these sessions. Additionally, with our plans to expand into the Ottawa Community, STSA will be covering all volunteer travel costs to get to the various locations across the city.
- Snacks: All tax clinic participants (tax preparers, CPAs, STSA executives, clients) volunteer their time for free to operate the tax clinic. As a thank you to these people, we offer light snacks on in-person tax clinic shifts (i.e. muffins, donuts).
- Equipment: As the size of the Tax Clinic scales up, more equipment will be required to successful run Tax Clinic at various locations (i.e. power bars, extension cables, Printer, etc.)
- Marketing: To help promote our Tax Clinic services we utilize many marketing tools to promote through social media, poster boards, etc.
- Excess Funds: Any funds not used in the upcoming tax clinic run will be rolled forward to the next year’s tax clinic.