Tax season is here, and it’s important for income tax preparers to have the tools to prompt low- to moderate-income clients to save. After all, the tax refund is the largest single boost of income that many households receive all year, and the windfall could put them on a path to financial security.
The Volunteer Income Tax Preparer’s Toolkit: Showing Clients Why Tax Time is the Right Time to Save is a communications and resource guide for tax preparers on encouraging clients to save a part of their refund at tax time, based on findings from the Center for Social Development’s Refund to Savings (R2S) experiment. The toolkit also provides evidence from other national tax-time savings demonstrations and offers insights from five different VITA sites’ experiences in operating tax-time savings campaigns.
Friends of asset-building work are encouraged to pass along the resource to those who may be involved with VITA sites. Click here to download the toolkit.