The greatest pleasure of my work at the Hill Center comes in meeting leaders who are committed to making a difference in the community. When I heard about the work of AccountAbility Minnesota, I was impressed by an organization that provides free tax services to those in need. Tax preparation can be highly stressful, after all. (I had to wonder: would their services include my annual “Midnight Dash” to the Post Office?) Then I looked a little closer, and found that the total benefits they bring are much broader and deeper than I had imagined.
“I see this organization through the lens of social and economic justice,” said executive director Tracy Fischman. “Our services help people maintain – or achieve – self-sufficiency.” Those services include tax preparation and tax clinics, delivered by a veritable army of IRS-certified volunteers and through a network of relationships with other agencies and organizations. AccountAbility also offers a broader range of services to promote sound personal financial management. For example, they have formed alliances with credit unions and banks to offer banking services for those who have never banked, or who have had problems banking in the past.
Tax credits constitute opportunities for clients to change habits and practices. They might begin saving regularly, eliminate the (sometimes obscene) costs of check-cashing services, or break a cycle of payday loans. AccountAbility has partnered with the Financial Planning Association to offer basic clinics on saving for retirement and financial management. They even offer affordable refund loans for those who truly need the cash, and programs to purchase U.S. Savings Bonds or fund savings accounts when the payments arrive.
These services constitute a critical link for many in our society. As social and economic policymakers rely on tax credits to deliver economic support, many eligible recipients need help completing the required paperwork. AccountAbility provides this service very cost-effectively, too: with a small, highly capable staff and a budget of around $1M, the organization filed more than 17,000 tax returns and helped clients claim over $30M in tax credit funds in 2009. The average family income among those clients was approximately $16,000. These community leaders are making a huge difference, in ways that we might never have even considered.
As our telephone interview was ending, I asked about midnight rides to the Post Office. Fischman demurred. “We file all of our returns electronically,” she said with an audible smile.
What a concept.
