What Are Tax Preparation Centers?

Video Transcript

"Hi, I'm Miranda Chook, a CPA. I'm going to talk a little bit about tax preparation centers. Now there are both centers for profit, and not for profit. Now the the purpose of both would be to help you take all the information from your W-2's, 1099 forms and any other forms that you've received from payers and any information on the deduction side and expenses and put all that information on the right lines of the right forms and help you calculate the taxes that are either due to the IRS from you or the refund that's due to you. And what they'll do for you is take the information from your W-2's, your 1099 forms and any of the other forms that you've received from payers as well as to information you have on the deduction side like charitable contributions you've made during the year and help you put all that information on the right lines of the right forms and help you calculate either the tax that's due to the IRS or the refund that's due to you. Now most of these centers also offer electronic filing so that you may be able to get your refund faster. Now, some of the non-profit centers typically are targeted to specific areas of the tax paying population such as AARP for the elderly or the Volunteer Income Tax Assistants Program, VITA, that's for low to moderate income tax payers and there's a VITA specifically for the military as well. So if you want a list of these tax preparation centers, you can either go to the IRS's own website at irs.gov or you can check with your local chamber of commerce."