R10 Tax-Aide Pacific Regional Coordinator Message

February 3, 2023

From: Paul Nibarger, Tax-Aide Pacific Regional Coordinator
To: AARP Foundation Tax-Aide Pacific Region Volunteers
Subject: R10 Tax-Aide Pacific Regional Coordinator Message

Greetings to the Pacific Region volunteers from your Regional Coordinator. I want to thank each and every one of you for your contributions to the program last year. I’m delighted to hear that many of our volunteers that were unable to help last year will be returning as volunteers in some capacity along with many new volunteers. We are certainly in a rebuild mode. I know that you are working with partners to re-open sites or find new sites to open. You have gone above and beyond what you thought you would be doing as a volunteer with AARP Foundation Tax-Aide. I personally appreciate it, your leadership at the national office appreciates it, and your taxpayers appreciate it!!!  

Despite the program challenges last year, your efforts had a great impact on your communities. We continue too hear from taxpayers who are extremely grateful for your service and the help you give them preparing their tax returns each year.

Region 10 consists of AZ1, CA1, CA2, CA3, CA4, CA5, NV1 and UT1 with about 3,000 individual volunteers. Here are just a few of our regional accomplishments from this past season:

• Region 10 assisted about 100,000 plus clients and processed over 97,000 Federal tax returns in 2022. This was a marked increase from the 62,000 tax returns in 2021 and points to the start of a strong rebuild.
• Throughout the Pacific Region we have over 500 sites. Although many sites were unable to allow taxpayers in the buildings last season, we were able to operate virtually or with Drop-Off at a majority of our sites. You stepped up to the challenges which enabled us to help many more taxpayers than the prior year.
• Some of you supported the Alternative Tax Preparation (ATP) model and were able to help taxpayers who were preparing their own returns using IRS-provided software. ATP involves volunteers “coaching” taxpayers in the preparation of their own tax returns via an online virtual methodology. The process may not work for every preparer or taxpayer, but it has been improved and grown over the last four years. There is detailed orientation material in the Volunteer Portal about the ATP program. If you are interested in volunteering, see:  Volunteer Portal > Libraries > Service Delivery Models > Alternative Tax Preparation

Some guidance for the tax season. My number one goal for the season remains the safety of our volunteers and our clients. Keep yourself, your fellow volunteers, your host site partners and the taxpayers safe!  My number two goal is to maintain the high quality accuracy of the returns we prepare. Get the returns right!  Protect taxpayer data!  Support each other!

Finally, let’s have some fun. It’s fun to help people. It’s fun to have a skill that others treasure. As always, thank you for all you do for Tax-Aide and our taxpayers, especially right now as many are enormously stressed both generally and financially.

The Happenings Newsletter will be mailed later this month.

Cheers,
Paul

Paul Nibarger
Regional Coordinator
R10, Pacific Region
AARP Foundation Tax-Aide
310.303.9142
[email protected]