 East Bay Community Action Program, and I coordinate them. Thank you. Yeah, I'm sure you're all familiar with Nick. If not, he's from the East Bay Community Program Action. Like he said, they are our partners at Roger Woodham Law School, so we work in tandem with them to do the VITA program. And he's pretty much going to be on all your sites and just helping you so get used to him, get familiar with him. And for those of you who don't know, he'll be taking charge of today's meeting. Oh, yeah, yeah, definitely. He'll be making the presentation today. Yep, yep, definitely looking forward to input from Joe and Ryan if they have any. For sure, so no, I'm always talking. And any of the returners too, if any of you want to speak up, just raise your hand and call out. It doesn't really matter. So yeah, the VITA coordinator, my name is Nick, and I just wanted to go around and just get your name, SSU, over, setting up, because they're all set. But I just wanted to kind of get everyone's name. So that way as we move progress through getting you all ready and whatnot, it'll help me remember along the way, because I'm definitely big on remembering names. And, you know, I think it helps us just work together easily. So yeah, we can just start over there. Hi, Kayla. So, my name is Kayla, I'm a 3L here. Oh, that's good. You have one fact about yourself, you can always share that. You like to run, ping, skip jump. I play basketball. I play basketball. Awesome. My name is Michael, I'm also a 3L. And I like to spend time with people. My name is Shay, I'm also a 3L. I'm asking out for 25. Anything. I'm Tyler, I'm a 2L. I don't like to run, ever. And I don't really like that. If you're really big into competing or anything, Tyler holds the most hours in the VITA program at 86. So if you want to top that at all for this year, don't be asking how you can do that and you can try to topple Tyler's a few hours. Please don't literally topple me. We count. We know Ryan and Joe's already, so I'm just going to give them a break from introducing themselves for now. Oh, alright, alright. Any interesting facts, guys? Last night I was at a great event at the West stadium. Interesting facts. Drawing tax and business laws was mighty. Thought you'd say great. No way. I'm Amanda, I'm a 2L and I was actually the job manager for you. I'm a 1L man. Alright, that's my engineering Connecticut. I don't remember that. Josh. I'm Caitlin. I'm a 1L man. I was in a color card, so I like to spin the slits for fun. Maybe when we have some slow time, we can try to see you. Show us. My name's Ryan. I'm a 2L and my team and I just won Aiden's Pub Privia last night. I am colorblind. I'm Megan. I'm a 2L and rolled in a dog and a cat, so I'm pretty dizzy. I'm Paul. I'm a 1L. I graduated Fairfield University where I was the psychology club president. I'm Muneo. I'm a 2L and I used to play rugby. I'm Sebastian. I'm a 2L. I don't like dogs. I like Kanye West. Hello. My name is Cam. I am a 2L and I used to be a high school teacher. My name's Dylan. I'm a 1L. I have a dog. I have a dog. We won't pair you two up together. If we have slow time, we might also work on that, too. Alright. We'll definitely have our chats. My name is Judy. I'm a 1L and I have four middle names. My name is Judith Patricia Wilhelmina Augusta and Barcavige. I'm a 1L. My name is Gailen. I'm a 1L. I'm a summer. I went to Iceland for the second time in my life. Really cool. Do you have family there? Yeah. My dad went to Iceland. My name is Justin. I'm a 2L. I'm from Buffalo, New York. I did a New York City for the first time until last Christmas. Wow. I've seen the Niagara Falls a hundred times. My name is Michael. I'm a 2L. I also don't know how to ride a bike. I spend most of my free time studying astrophysics and what lies beyond the cosmos. When you were like six? Okay. My name is Kelsey and I actually used to compete in mountain bike races. Alright, good. Yeah, when you don't have appointments, you can be working on that. Sir? My name is Vincent. I'm a 2L. I genuinely don't have anything interesting that I can think of right now. I'm sorry. I remember that you used to work in the hospitality industry. I've said that a lot. There's a lot of people that aren't 1Ls that have put that too many times. Unfortunately, I did. I used to work there for about ten years. See, that's a fact. We do get impressions. Oh, God. Wait a minute, what? I don't know. I can ride a bike, but I probably won't teach you guys. Fun facts, fun facts. I don't really know. Speak a little bit of Portuguese. Does anyone speak Portuguese in here? Awesome. We can work on it together and then we can talk to clients. Alright, so that's a sneaky way of getting you guys to admit if you have any second language abilities because I need that in Curtis. I'm sorry. You missed the awkward introductions. So, Curtis, do you have a phone back about yourself that you can share with everybody? A fun fact. I tried to give a couple, but... What can you think of? You're a twin. You're twins in med school at Brown. You used to be in med school, but now you're a law student. Okay, you have all the facts. Anything other than that? I'm trying to twin. Return of twins. Oh, okay. I thought that was like normal. He got defensive about it. Fun fact, I played in a movie when I was younger, which movie go over? What? Was it Eddie? No. One movie. That's really cool. That's the awkward question. Sister and sister. I'm not going to say that though, because I really want to find out. During tax season, I'm definitely going to be asking you repeatedly. No, I don't want to film on the spot. If you all want to, check it out. The reason that I asked you all for an awkward moment is just so I can remember your name. But knowing that, I'm not going to say that. I'm not going to say that. I'm not going to say that. Just so I can remember your name. But knowing your name is an important part of building up our team. I think that we'll definitely, we'll definitely be switching you around in different places, having you partner up with different people throughout your experience here with Vita. So it's important and you'll definitely be asking people's names repeatedly because you won't remember. You'll only be here once a week for like 12 weeks. I'm going to try to remember your name as much as possible. At one point and then for the rest of the season you'll remember it. But I think it's just really important to volunteer management in general. It's important to, you know, recognize people and tell them how good job they're doing and everything's open. I think it's important that you all just build a sense of community and hopefully that'll be a part of that working with you throughout the year. But we're here to talk today about my below it. So logging into the website that you'll be using to take your certifications and just so you all know I did a plan to take you through one of the certifications. I'm actually not going to take you through it today. It wasn't the whole thing. I was just going to take you through some different questions and whatnot to show you what it looked like. But they actually today must be the first day that the training is actually open and for you to be able to become certified as a tax repair. Which is awesome. I did not expect that today at all. But kind of a little hesitant. Maybe I'll take you through the basic one since I won't be using that. But yeah, actually, we'll just go through the basic one and run through it a little bit. So today is the first day so it's good that you're getting your training today. So just so you know. So this is the home screen for the certification training and the best way you're going to get ready for this training is by reading those books very carefully but you don't need to know all of the information. So the first couple sections skip the Affordable Care Act stuff you're just going to be referencing that throughout the entirety of the tax season or you're going to be yelling out my name so I can come across the site to talk with you about it. In all honesty some of the information in these booklets is going to be really useless to you until you're actually in a scenario where you need to know it. In which case we have Publication 17 which I commonly refer to as the tax bible as well as these training materials for you to reference. So when you go through be sure to pay attention to the first couple sections you want to know when reading your books about who can file as a dependent and who what the dependent is or isn't. I guess I should say who because we're dealing with people not who want to know the differences. How much income you can have to qualify as dependent if you're above the age of 24 and if you're a student you know what age can you be as a student before you can't be filed under your parent's taxes anymore. Stuff like that. For those of you who have never filed taxes on your own either by doing your own taxes working with a tax repair and answering questions this is going to be very new to you. So if you want to be sure to read those first couple sections carefully just so that way you can retain that information because those are going to be vital questions that you're asking about come the start of our appointments. It's like the first like 10 minutes that's just the questions and everything just to determine who you're dealing with because you're going to want to ask does anyone else live with you in the home if they do depending on the taxpayers age you'll have to get their income as well or certain credits and whatnot. So those first couple sections are going to be really important. Later on as you go through there's going to be different rules and whatnot when you go through these certifications that you're just going to want to reference back to owning your own business for example that's something that you're not going to memorize all of that if you do you're amazing you're like Superman in the tax world that's what Tyler was by the way so you all have if you want to become Superman you're definitely going to have to study that but you'll definitely just be using a lot of reference materials so when you go through you're just going to create a login and username which will be over here on create and account you'll be going under www.linklearncertification.com as it says at the top and you'll have that linked to in the training materials that are provided for you so you can get ready you'll go in you'll create your own password I recommend using the beginning part of your Roger Williams email address and then keeping your password as generic as possible so that way you can get in I might have to reset this which is incredibly embarrassing because I actually just reset it alright so I'm going to reset it it's fairly straightforward you'll also be getting a lot of different user names two which is this is your good Nick and one is a different username I have for the actual training portal which I'll show you too when we go through this but you're going to want to write all of that down we'll collect that information from you so that way if there's any point in the tax season that you need to go and study we'll have that materials for you so that way you can reference back to it easily without having to remember off the top of your head because I know using a generic password that you use for all of the other accounts whether it's your bank account personal email, whatever whatever is useful but I mean I wouldn't use it for any of this training because sometimes you do have to reset it and then you won't remember what your password was because you had to reset it and you couldn't use the old one that you had that's happened to me a couple of times and when you're using different sites so if any of you are going to be working at the bristle site and at the new port site you will have to create two different usernames and then you may or may not have to use two different passwords two depending on if they've updated the software for this year so that's just something too where you'll be dealing with I had at least five usernames and five different passwords for all of them last year that I was consistently cycling through and changing and sometimes with your busy schedule and then coming to Vita it's just not going to you're not going to remember everything you might leave a paper somewhere so we're just going to ask for that up front as soon as you create everything before the season starts so you'll log in after creating your username and password and selecting who you'll select in there too you're just going to select volunteer there are certain capabilities that you can select staff person or whatever but then you would need a special certification number all that stuff so always just like volunteer for everything and you'll come in this is so I wasn't expecting this to actually be ready which is nice they have everything categorized for you so you'll want to ignore the basic tab because we're only certifying you to advanced and advanced covers everything that basic does just covers a little bit more on top of it so you won't be missing anything by not choosing any of the basic exams and you won't be disqualified from doing VITA without having your basic completed that was something that we made sure a lot about last year I started two weeks before VITA last year so when we were like trying to figure out what the certifications were because my boss had never done the program either we had a billion questions and that was one of them so just so you're all aware so you'll come down you'll want to start with your volunteer standards of conduct your interview and taking quality review exam and then you'll move right into the advanced exam you can take the psych-coordinated training if you want to it's actually just a powerpoint that you cycle through there's nothing really pertinent to you all in there so it's just an added 5 to 10 minutes of cycling through powerpoints until you get to the very end and then you're the psych-coordinator so I would just advise skipping it unless you do want to see what we have to deal with and you're interested in that you can do but I will always be at the psych so there's no need for anyone else to be a psych-coordinate and when you come take the exam so I'm going to click on the basic one afterwards but there is the 2017 health savings account exam on here down at the very bottom we are always looking for people to take that exam it's an extra packet that you would need and I believe it's been provided to you already in those training materials it's not required we're definitely not requiring it about you but if you do want to be able to provide that extra service to people we had maybe five clients last year who had an HSA but for because and you really don't study that much one of the volunteers was like I don't know why you don't have it because I like to do just flip you some things, take the test and it was really easy but because it also never comes up very frequently in our day-to-day typically the volunteers tend to forget they tend to forget what the actual training was but if you ever want to help us out I'll be taking it so you can always refer clients to me in the future just so you know but if you want to help out clients as well then I would suggest taking it the same goes for military, international part of it going to foreign student exams oh and these are just circular 230s just some of the laws but for these they have special exams on here so you can be working you can work with clients who are from Puerto Rico International or or in the military our site if you're not qualified to do it then our site, I mean not you all in general as a vital site if you're not qualified no one's qualified to do it even though their forms might be really standard or look similar to a W-2 a 1099 we cannot do it and we'll actually lose the grant and everything for the vital site which we want to not do so for the on Puerto Rico is it your sense that there are a lot of people from Puerto Rico who are in Rhode Island now because of the hurricane and might actually need I guess what I'm asking is do you see or expect an uptick in the need among Puerto Rican red people living here that's a really great question actually and it hadn't crossed my mind no one from the IRS has said anything about whether or not it would be in our best interest to do that simply we try to tailor everything to our surrounding communities and in my experience the person who came to us and was from Puerto Rico and I think his was a little harder to because he was also in the military so it was kind of like a little different but you know that is a really great question and I'm going to have to follow up with our spec liaison thank you for that because that is awesome and if you all have any questions too please feel free to the trainings that we were already but as I said we only had one person who was from Puerto Rico last year at the Brussels site so there isn't very much a need within the community at our site but because of circumstances that would have people coming here to our sites we might actually need to reevaluate that and I'll let you all know worst case not worst case scenario but if there is a need then I will be taking the exam so there's not going to be you don't have to do any additional materials if you don't want to and I guess that's also what I want to address with you all is that you don't have to take any of these additional exams but if you want to because you want to be increased here if you want to be able to help the community members more then last year you most certainly can and definitely encourage that but I just don't know if you will be using those skills or not so these are just options here I know I want to say with CCAP the person who handles the grants for the coalition, Rita she actually does with a lot of international students at Federal Hill House she works with a lot of international students so they do require that of volunteers, at least one volunteer at the site and the site coordinators do have that training if you're advertising the site or the program here to students definitely feel free to reach out ahead of time if you're going to be talking to your friends or friends from other departments or whatever and they need to get their taxes done here and they need it done for free or whatnot shoot me a heads up text, email, whatever so that I can get the training and that way we can accommodate them but we didn't have too too many students last year who came to us so I don't know if that will increase this year not with the larger group of VITA students but it wouldn't hurt to be prepared so there are all of these different exams that you can take basic really quick I just wanted to run through some of the questions with you maybe we'll even just go through so we'll just go in here so you have two tries to take these exams if you don't complete them with an 80% or better then you fail and you can't predict the program without actually sorry you would need to create a new username password to get the exams on to do the program but yeah you would need to just talk to us if you take this exam and you get below an 80% and you're worried that you might miss another question because you're doing just okay with everything but your grasp on the material isn't that great reach out to us ahead of time so that way we can help you with taking the exam because we definitely don't want you to fail the second time and then have to go through recreating everything and take the exam like five more times it doesn't make any sense yes so what Nick just said if you take the exam one time so that's not like don't start the second time if you fail it the first time which is below 80% it's not going to say you failed but that's the threshold then just don't attempt it a second time talk to us and then we'll help you with the process of getting certified but you do need to attempt it at least the first time yeah definitely and you know when you can partner up with people and go through the exam book together you actually have the physical exam book with you so the order of the questions might be a little different when you take the exam but all of them are mostly the same so you can mark down the book ahead of time I feel like it's like cheating am I telling you that so I don't know don't tell anyone else about that already but yeah you can definitely work together on the exam and everything and just you know you have that resource there so it should make it easier for you we want this to be easy for you while you're still learning the information of course because we don't want you to show up and not be that'd be kind of weird for sure so I'm just going to run through the basic exam so you would go up you click on the exam and click launch they have the instructions right there for you so you can definitely read through this is the volunteer changes of conduct you'll also be providing us a form that you signed with your information on it not like crazy information just like your email address and saying that you passed all of your certifications up to the level that we'll be placing you at so you'll be passing everything so you'll be able to be in every position but we'll just you start off with this one then you'd kind of move in a progression to the intake and quality review after this one and then you'll be taking the advanced exam you can take the basic for fun if you want to not fun just practice and then practice but I don't recommend it I would just skip it entirely so it's fairly straightforward they'll ask you a question then you'll pick A, B, C, or D some of the questions in the the actual exam itself were not always multiple choice so I would just be sure to look out for that when you take the exam I'm not going to read you everything now unfortunately I had the exams done and I was going to take you through the actual basic exam but I can't do that now so when you do take it just be sure to read everything carefully and make sure that none of the questions were changed on you and it's fairly straightforward for the certifications if you do have any questions the training materials are there for you to look at not the training materials but the packet handout that you were provided I'm instructing you on how to sign it so do you any of you have any questions for me about the certifications or getting on the website so once you get on the website and you are working through everything you're going to have to you can click on here to electronically approve everything but we're going to ask that you print off your certifications to provide for us because we need those when we get audited by the IRS so our IRS days will come in one day unannounced and say I'm here for a quality review I'm going to be sitting with this group of volunteers as they do a quality review in take or they're actually preparing a return so it's something unexpected and they'll ask us to see our documentation too so by the time that the museums are due and your certifications are due you'll have kind of a week period in order to get that into us and we'll also hand you down to if you're on site without that paperwork because it's really important we would definitely lose the ability to provide the service to the community if any mistakes were made for whatever reason so we want to mitigate that by having all of you so after that you would go you'll be working in the practice lab working on sample returns we'll be doing a lot of this as the training takes place coming up in January we'll be walking you through returns getting you prepared for dealing with clients and some of the situations that might arise as you finish everything you'll definitely be able to start working on some practice scenarios so you'd go into the practice lab we'll give you the access code for right now I don't know if they've updated or not so as soon as you just so you know they actually released the certifications today oh how perfect yeah so everyone can actually start doing everything so as far as I know we did not update yeah there's a code that will give you to get on the practice lab you don't need it right now since we're working on those certifications but you'll have to create a new username and password to get into this one just like all of the others which I know is kind of a lot but we'll hold on to that duration too like I said so you sign in I'm actually already signed in so that doesn't really matter this is what the main screen looks like the practice lab home it has additional information here that you can look at stuff so this will be all stuff for the actual tax layer software so you don't really have to worry about too much of it like configuring tax tax layer pro not something you have to worry about in the installation some of the stuff you can look through like creating the e-file electronically filing stuff like that I mean I would definitely peruse preparing the return is going to be important I would take a look at that information for a chart but it's not something that you definitely that you necessarily won't get without going into the practice lab so you'll just go in here click on go to practice lab area and it's this is literally the software that we'll be using this is just a means of doing returns without it actually being in our I guess database because all of that information that you put in on the tax client is retained for not even just a season but I can still go in now to 2016 and look at all of that information I'm hoping that they finalize the ability to pull their information up so from one tax return here to the next that was something that they were supposed to be working on I hope that kind of pans out but basically you'll just go in and this is the software that you use so we try to work with our older volunteers too so that way they're aware of what the program looks like and this is all just very very technical so I would definitely suggest looking at it on your own time for sure but I just wanted to show you also that you're aware of it ahead of time if you want to go in I've gone in and put in my information just so I can be like oh what does my tax return look like for this coming year alright and this is just letting you know that they're still making changes because it might affect your return so for all of this beginning information the basic information your filing status, your personal information your dependent information that's where I said that you'll definitely need to know about that information from your book because you could ask your tax client are you a dependent if they're 35 years old but they have a disability and they're living with their parents and they say that they could really be a dependent living at home for whatever reason and they just don't know it but in their parents or wherever they're living with is not with them to tell you otherwise they don't know any better so you have to make sure that you ask the right questions to identify who this person is and then what the filing status is and their personal information so I'm single I'd go in just click pretty straightforward it's all the information that we'll be taking down from clients the questions down here too will be all information that it'll be talked about at the beginning sections of those books as well so if they're 18 and a full time student you click there that means that they're probably going to be a dependent and clicking one thing and then just because you put single and then clicking that it'll be registered to them as a dependent even though you might not put them on there at a different part so all of these things sometimes don't connect when you put in the information so you have to make sure it's all accurate when you go in yeah I just want you to have that information these are going to be helpful resources for you as you get started so when you look through the books and you want to actually see what it's going to look like doing a return so that way you have an idea of what the system will look like you can take that information from the practice book and put it into this system so that way you can see what it looks like to actually be preparing a return while you're taking your certification I think that'll really be useful for you in terms of getting ready for a tax time and also filling out the certification tests and as I said you can just circle the little bubbles in the book alright and then other than that I didn't have anything else to go over Joe and Ryan I didn't know if you wanted to go over anything else or do you have any questions Joe do you want to go over the timeline of what you want us to do from here until this program begins sure did everybody sign in by the way I'm just going to leave the roster right here so from here on you go to your winter break you'll get the packages that you have today those are the tools that you'll be using for your training so they're yours to keep and just a quick point on the packages if you did accidentally take more than one please leave it on the table because there are people here who didn't get a packet so after you go into the winter break you'll get your certification you'll get certified if you do not get certified just please shoot me an email Ryan an email you can shoot Susan an email then come January we're going to have another meeting Joe just rewind so for you how did you do it did you pick a week during winter break did you cram it when you got back the second semester did you just run it out and do it like beautifully three hours a week personally I recommend starting as early as possible because it might not seem like a lot of information but it is really dense especially if it's your first time I'm pretty sure Max and Tyler other people who've done it last year they're testament to that the information is a lot to go through so I would start early I personally did it like two days a week but not like my entire two days like an hour or two each day and keep in mind that we a lot about 20 to 25 hours just for this portion so you get 20 to 25 hours of credit just for the certification process so that's on you if you want to take more than 25 hours or less than 25 hours but I would definitely regulate that time because it does take quite some time it's definitely going to take you just a while number more than 15 hours for sure like I look at everyone's paper for years it's really 20 just so you don't underestimate it but again that's like half of you can count up to 25 hours of training towards your promo service after 25 you can but do what you need to do but we want to make sure your actual service with people equals your training so it's not like a program to just train for 50 hours it does take time it takes a lot of time so after you if you have the discipline you can do it in a week but who's going to take an entire week out of their winter break just to do this she might but yeah I would say just pace yourselves start early do not wait until the week before you start back at school because then you're just putting yourself under immense pressure once you get certified or if you don't get certified if you get certified shoot us an email so last year I think we emailed it not sure well ideally you'll upload them I can't remember what I said to you guys the whole length there will be a shared google folder for this group ideally you'll upload your certifications right to that google drive so that Nick can just get in there and print them if you have to you can drop one in my office but I think that's the easiest way to upload them right to the shared google drive yeah so when you get certified about three certifications or two I think are just going to automatically print out so those are going to be like evidence of your certification upload those into the drive and then you're all set if you don't get certified choose an email will help you only do it once do not go back trying to do it a second time just attempt the the exam one time will help you get certified if you don't get certified the first time and I don't know yeah the next date yeah absolutely I think it may have been it should be in the hand out I'm just saying we should have done it absolutely it's the last page of the instructions or all the important dates so our next meeting we're going to be here again on January 19 that's a Friday we'll be here at 2.30 to 5 and for the bite of I like to call them bite of veterans you guys will be here just a little bit before like an hour before because we have something special for you special lunch for the people who are returning yeah for people who are returning so that's incentive for the first years to come again next year but yeah so we'll have a training session again on the 19 so that's we're going to be helping people who didn't get certified to get certified yeah and that training will be like very hands on because at that point you're going to be like okay I did the test it feels really obscure and theoretical like how to do it so we're going to like really teach you how do you do it and also give you pointers on how to work with difficult clients how to tell if they owe money and when they're educated and all that good stuff it'll be much more like a lie so now go for it just because if you do use the practice lab make a login and go in the practice lab and do everything like I said with the certification scenarios and what not there's still other things that you'll need to know so I just wouldn't go in thinking like oh I did this, this and this I'm definitely all set definitely come to that training I think it's mandatory anyways but just that way I want to let you know that there's more things that we have to talk about other than just using the software yeah I mean so just this synopsis of the timeline so today we meet you go, you do your finals and then you have Christmas break then you start getting certified certification I mean you can start anywhere some people start by practicing and then they look at the materials others start with the materials however you want to do it you get certified or you don't get certified if not you choose an email and then we'll meet again on the 19th but the meeting on the 19th is a general meeting anyways for everybody you're all supposed to be here at 230 so you'll get an email closer to that anyway just to remind you but that's pretty much a synopsis of where we go from here and the only thing is most of you should have gotten an email from me yesterday if you didn't it means that you signed up on a google form probably later so it's really important you sign in so we can get this roster cleaned up to sign up for your actual chefs and hopefully you'll understand that's a spreadsheet you can move your name might be itself it's already populated but just erase your name if you want to put yourself down for a different shift obviously people have certain dates that they're going to miss but once you're going to miss like every other Tuesday we will ask you like the week before if there's a date for your grandmother's 19th birthday party let Nick know but for now just sign up for the shift that you want weekly so we get a sense of do we have too many people on a certain date or a certain location or if you want to do every shift like Curtis you can go ahead and do that go ahead and do that it's my best timing we want them all to volunteer and is anyone that knows if you're working with someone to do the training and you can just use one book to share it please just drop the book off and we can like just leave it one if you know you're going to work with someone yeah but if you took one an extra one today by accident please just leave it because people here didn't get I think it's only fair that those who are here should get a book and those who are not should not there's a lot of great things going on today that's it guys enjoy the pizza