In the midst of this economic crisis, many students are unaware of the benefits that can come from filing taxes and are instead scrambling to save their money.
A financial literacy forum will be held on Dec. 2 to give students the opportunity to learn how to manage their finances.
Community Service Commissioner Farhan Banani has been working with Volunteer Income Tax Assistance at UCLA to put on a workshop that educates students about scholarship forms, retirement funds, mutual funds, stocks, wage and tax statements, financial dependency, and other basic personal finance tips. They will be explaining to students how the economic downtown affects a public school and, more specifically, the individual students, and how they can better manage their money, Banani said.
This will be helpful for students because they can find out how they can get money back from the government by filing their taxes, and they can avoid having to pay penalties when filing their taxes, said John Franco, co-head coordinator for VITA.
“We realized that students here and people in the general community are working harder than they have in the past, so it’s a good time for people to be smart about their money. That’s the whole basis for this financial literacy workshop,” Banani said.
Volunteer Income Tax Assistance is a national program sponsored by the IRS with a chapter at UCLA. It consists of about 120 student volunteers, all IRS certified. Its goal is to educate people about the tax process and to also be a resource where people can get their taxes done for free, Franco said.
“We offer tax assistance for free, and we are a resource for the students. And it’s a great way for us to reach out to the UCLA community and help them out,” said Christine Hermawan, co-head coordinator of Volunteer Income Tax Assistance.
The forum is a pilot to see how students respond to the information presented to them. It will be run by three student VITA volunteers, and the Community Service Commission hopes to have another forum in the winter.
The forum’s purpose is to cover general financial topics, a lot of which are tax-related questions, Banani said.
Students will be asked to fill out an evaluation at the end of the forum so Banani and the VITA volunteers can see what parts were especially useful to students so they can focus on those aspects in future workshops.
“We can troubleshoot and gear this for the larger campus. We would like to do one if not two for the winter,” Banani said.
Ultimately, Banani and VITA would like to offer the forum to the community and the local high schools.
“It would be really helpful to get these young high school juniors and seniors learning these skills,” Banani said.
Banani said he is grateful to VITA for being helpful and making him more financial responsible.
“Our whole process involves education. We talk them though everything. We are kind of an opportunity to put money back in people’s pockets,” Franco said.
The forum will be open to all students, and it will be held in Dodd 167 from 6 to 7 p.m.