A month into tax-filing season, Colorado Mesa University students are on pace to prepare and file more tax returns for Grand Junction-area residents than last year’s 150.

CMU offers the free tax assistance through the Internal Revenue Service’s Volunteer Income Tax Assistance (VITA) program, which provides basic tax return preparation to qualifying individuals.

Suzanne Owens-Ott, interim academic department head of CMU’s Davis School of Business, said 144 appointments with individuals had been scheduled as of Feb. 24, 83 filings had been completed, and 11 more are in progress.

“Thus far, it has been pretty steady,” Owens-Ott said. “Gary (Hypes, a CMU accounting instructor) has been returning five to 10 calls per day to schedule. This is the first year that we will be doing returns past spring break.”

While the federal deadline to file tax returns is April 15, CMU will stop filing returns as of April 5.

Colorado Mesa has 31 students working its two sessions per week, Wednesday 6-8 p.m. and Saturday 9 a.m. to noon, and Owens-Ott said they have been averaging 15 to 20 appointments per session.

An appointment can be booked by calling 970-248-1395.

While students are doing the work, they must complete and pass four IRS certifications to be qualified for the VITA program, which Hypes oversees. Then, they’re supervised by four CMU faculty members and have backstops in the form of 10 local Certified Public Accountants and IRS employees to answer questions, and a quality-review process is in place to ensure all filings are accurate and compliant.

CMU accounting major Brighten Baldwin, a senior who also is pursuing a Master of Business Administration, is one of the students doing the tax-return preparation. She said the VITA program is mutually beneficial for the CMU students and the clients.

“All of the clients that I’ve had have been like super, super appreciative of what we’re doing, because obviously taxes are a very stressful thing for a lot of people,” she said. “And it’s helped us gain experience, too, which has been nice, because I personally am an audit intern right now, so I do a lot of accounting things, but they’re not necessarily on the tax side.

“It’s been really cool for me to see how the processes work, how to actually file a return, how to work with clients who aren’t necessarily super familiar with that area. … It’s been very positive for me and all the people that I’ve worked with.”

Baldwin admits nerves surfaced at first, but it didn’t take long to settle down.

“Actually working with the clients, having real tax forms and using real tax software, that was kind of stressful at the beginning,” she said. “But I will say that the transition into getting comfortable with actually filing the taxes wasn’t as hard as I thought it was gonna be. The forms were relatively self-explanatory and the software is very user-friendly. 

“So, the stuff that we’re doing, especially with the support of the external reviewers, has made it a lot easier to transition into.”

Baldwin has done two audit internships with accounting firms, and she said, “I’ve really liked the audit side of things.”

She thinks that might be her future in accounting post-CMU, but the tax-preparing experience she’s getting through the VITA program has reminded her she has options.

“This is kind of like my first year being introduced to tax, and I actually will say I like it a lot more than I expected to,” Baldwin said. “Like, I was not excited about tax. I did not want to do it. But I really, really enjoyed the process so far. … I think either way it’s super, super helpful for any student going into accounting, especially if they want to be a CPA, just being able to see those real-life examples and kind of connect some of those dots.

“I don’t know if I personally will go into taxes, but I will say I’m definitely more open to it now than I was before this year.”