Tax Prep Program Teaches Tax Literacy to Low-Income Individuals

Every year, from January through mid-April, the glass-lined lobby of the Karabots Pediatric Care Center in West Philadelphia gets transformed by volunteers helping people file taxes and understand their returns.A typical shift finds a first-time filer getting coached through each line of the family’s tax return. The mother of a clinic patient learns she can claim expenses from her daughter’s college education, while an elderly woman who already filed her taxes sets a time to apply for the Pennsylvania Rent Rebate program. One possible future approach comes from Anya Jayanthi, a Penn undergraduate who found an innovative way to present educational materials to taxpayers in her accounting class, Tax Policy and Practice in the Philadelphia Community, taught by Professor Edward Scott, CPA, PhD. The course is an Academically Based Community Service (ABCS) course supported by the Netter Center for Community Partnerships that integrates lectures on the American tax system and the racial wealth gap with student community service as tax preparer volunteers.

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