Sec. 2. Findings

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Congress makes the following findings: Community Volunteer Income Tax Assistance

(VITA)programs offer tax preparation and related financial services, free of charge, to middle- and low-income individuals and families. The majority of individuals served by VITA programs have annual household earnings below $54,000. During the 2016 Federal income tax filing season, VITA programs filed more than 3.8 million Federal income tax returns. This included more than 714,000 returns for the earned income tax credit (EITC), helping program recipients claim $1.1 billion in EITC on their Federal tax refunds. One in five taxpayers who were eligible to claim the EITC failed to do so. VITA programs assist underserved taxpayers, including low-wage workers, persons with disabilities, the elderly, Native Americans, rural populations, and taxpayers with limited English proficiency. In 2016, clients of VITA programs electronically filed their tax returns at a much higher rate (96.5 percent) than the general population (86.4 percent). Electronic returns cost the Internal Revenue Service considerably less to process ($0.22 per return) than paper returns ($4.09 per return). The high rate of electronic filing by VITA sites saves the Internal Revenue Service millions of dollars per year. An Internal Revenue Service survey has shown that very low-income taxpayers are twice as likely as the general population to visit a Taxpayer Assistance Center and half as likely to use the Internal Revenue Service Web site. Volunteer tax preparation programs serve as an accessible and cost-effective alternative to other Internal Revenue Service channels. Internal Revenue Service estimates from fiscal year 2005 found that the volunteer preparation program cost $12.01 per contact, while Taxpayer Assistance Centers and assisted toll-free calls averaged $28.73 and $19.46 per contact, respectively. The number of tax returns prepared by the VITA program increased 100 percent between the 2014 (1.9 million) and 2016 (3.8 million) tax filing seasons. During tax filing season 2016, 298 organizations applied to the Internal Revenue Service seeking more than $24.3 million in grant funding through the VITA program—more than double the available resources—and 210 organizations received grants at a median grant of approximately $40,000.