With tax season upon us, a London, Ont., centre is hosting free tax filing clinics for low-income residents.
London’s Crouch Neighbourhood Resource Centre began cracking down on paperwork last week through their Community Volunteer Income Tax Program and executive director Jennifer Martino said that appointments have been filling up.
“We opened on March 2, and we’ve been filling up all the appointment slots, and also seeing lots of people come by the front desk at the resource center and dropping off tax forms as well,” she said.
Free tax clinics are organized in combination with community volunteers as well as the Canada Revenue Agency (CRA), according to Martino.
She highlighted that this year has already been quite busy compared to previous years for the east-end centre, saying that “times are tough for a lot of Londoners.”
“In the last year, the group of volunteers that we have at Crouch filed over 2,000 tax returns for 1,500 individuals,” she said, adding that the team consists of five volunteers this tax season.
“Everything’s more expensive right now and so folks who are trying to make ends meet on low income, this is one way to reduce one of the expenses at least that they have.”
Martino stressed that “the free tax clinic is a way to make sure that they’re accessing their social benefits without having to pay a fee to file their taxes.”
She said that for herself and the other volunteers, the work is “extremely meaningful to them, especially when you hear some of the stories about how it can change someone’s life.”
“Last year, there was a family that had been in Canada for just over a year and a half,” she said. “They had four children, and they didn’t know about the candidate child care benefit. So, it actually ended up changing their income so much that they were able to purchase a used vehicle and use it to make deliveries with their own business.
“We get lots of other stories, especially about seniors who are accessing the guaranteed income supplement or old age security, and they tell us that it just absolutely transformed their lives month to month,” Martino said.
She added that even if incoming residents to the centre haven’t completed their previous tax returns, their group of volunteers is still available to help.
“We actually go back as far as 10 years at a time,” she said. “If people have multiple years of returns to do all at once, it’s best that they book an appointment to do that. With drop off, we can only go back as far as two years.”
Martino said that there are a lot of reasons why someone might be in a situation to not file their tax returns but, most of the time, the benefits are there.
“It can be a little bit anxiety-producing, especially if you’re not sure if you’ll owe anything. But if you do owe, you can always work that out over time,” she said.
“What we see more often when someone’s on low income is that they actually haven’t been collecting the benefits that are due to them for multiple years. And when they resolve that, then it can really change their circumstances.”
The centre is one of 20 different free tax-filing options in London, according to Martino.
More information on free tax clinics can be found on the CRA’s website.