Tax help for low-income residents comes to Chelsea

Emil Gomez, a manager for Community Tax Aid, prepares a client’s tax return at Hudson Guild Fulton Center last Thursday evening.

By Chris Lombardi and Brooke Edwards

Bernice Oquendo looked up as the door opened to the Hudson Guild Fulton Center last Thursday evening. A man in his 50s, with a diffident manner, walked up to the desk of the graying but energetic receptionist and said quietly, “I’m here for the tax aid.”

Oquendo looked up and gave a big smile. “Alright honey, I got you,” she replied, as she took the man’s arm and guided him into a nearby waiting room. As she helped the man find a seat, she said, “Here you go. Don’t worry, they’ll take care of you,” motioning to volunteers seated at tables throughout the nondescript room, whose fluorescent lights cast a violet pall over cinderblock walls.

The volunteers were from Community Tax Aid, a nonprofit that has been preparing tax returns pro bono for the city’s low-income residents for 30 years. This tax season, C.T.A. is once again taking up residence in Chelsea at the Hudson Guild Fulton Center for eight consecutive Thursday evenings, shepherding taxpayers through the latest changes in the laws, in languages as diverse as Spanish, Chinese, Hindi and Croatian.

First in line on the list of 15 available slots was Carl Dunn, an outspoken young man sporting a bright-green shirt and large hoop earrings. “I’ve been telling everybody, if you wanna save some money, go to Hudson Guild,” he said with a flourish. Dunn said he knows everyone at Hudson Guild and plans to come every year for the service. “It’s free,” he said. “You can’t beat that.”

C.T.A. prepares approximately a thousand returns a year at 11 sites in the city’s five boroughs. The volunteers, who hail from the worlds of banking, accounting and law, regularly work with taxpayers whose family structures are complex: A tax return may include four generations, from the great-grandmother on down, with multiple dependents and sources of income.

But this year, for the first time, C.T.A. volunteers will be aided by new tax software called TaxSlayer, though the program proved stubborn last Thursday.

Attorney David Agosto was visibly frustrated while helping other volunteers work out TaxSlayer’s bugs. A 10-year C.T.A. veteran from the law firm Alston and Bird, ultimately he took it all in stride by shrugging at the first-week kinks. “Usually we do it by hand,” he said.

C.T.A. was founded in 1969, when, after new laws enlarged the pool of tax-paying Americans to include many more people of lesser means, lawyer-accountant Jeff Gold and lawyer Sheldon Barasch gathered a group of lawyers and accountants and trained them in issues affecting low-income taxpayers.

Jim Schiller, then with the international accounting firm KPMG, was one of the first to volunteer and, like most of the group’s board, has been doing it ever since.

Asked what has changed during the group’s 30-year existence, Schiller noted that in recent years, C.T.A. has been preparing doing fewer returns because of competition from the IRS itself and its VITA (Volunteers In Tax Assistance) program.

“At the height, we were doing between 1,600 and 1,700 returns a year,” said Schiller. Since the IRS instituted its program, that number has dwindled by nearly half.

The Chelsea site, which saw 91 returns last year, is one of the busiest in the city, alongside Harlem, with 124, and Fountain House, a community in Hell’s Kitchen for people recovering from mental illness, which generated 237 returns — nearly a quarter of C.T.A.’s total.

Each return takes about two hours, from initial intake to generating the final return, and all volunteers undergo rigorous training to ensure that they meet high standards. Even senior volunteers, known as managers, are retrained every year to ensure they are aware of the latest changes in the tax law.

According to Schiller, C.T.A. volunteers citywide are older now — many are now retired, while others are senior executives in their respective companies. He noted that the group’s client base is aging, too.

“In 1997, 10 percent of our clients citywide were over 65. Last year, it was 21 percent,” he said.

One of these older clients in Chelsea was Carlos Mera, who is also an employee at Hudson Guild. It was Mera’s third year having his taxes done by the C.T.A., whom he deemed, “very nice.” He has gotten a refund each time and vowed, “I’ll be back next year.”

But while the citywide volunteer corps is graying, the Chelsea corps was more balanced between the old guard and the new — with younger volunteers rushing in.

The youngest volunteer on Thursday night was Jennifer Zong, 19, a freshman in the business school at New York University. Although she completed the six-hour volunteer training a week before, Zong admitted, “I’m a little nervous.”

Jessica Schoengold wasn’t nervous about helping clients, though she was a bit skeptical about getting TaxSlayer up and running.

Schoengold works in fundraising for non-profit organizations and has volunteered with C.T.A. at its Chelsea location for three years. She used to work at a similar program in Boston.

“I like having the opportunity to see lower-income people get help and get treated fairly,” she said. “A lot of other tax services encourage them to take out loans to pay their taxes, and that’s upsetting. Most of our folks get refunds.”The booking situation at the Hudson Guild site corroborates Schoengold’s claim: Word of mouth has already filled all the allotted spaces through April 12. And no wonder, says Bernice Oquendo, who was herself a client for years before she began working at the center. She said the volunteers are always friendly, kind and treat clients with great courtesy.

And besides, Oquendo added, “They can find stuff that H & R Block can’t or won’t find.”

To find out about open slots at other C.T.A. sites or to volunteer, please visit: http://groups.msn.com/ctanyc/_homepage.msnw?pgmarket=en-us.