Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SUNDAY, March 22, 1992 TAG: 9203220095
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: D6 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: Associated Press
DATELINE: ALEXANDRIA LENGTH: Medium
But no one at the Alexandria Community Shelter or 17 other homeless shelters in the metropolitan Washington, D.C., area is laughing.
So far this year, volunteers have helped 105 shelter residents file income tax returns that will earn them refunds of more than $63,000 - an average $602 each.
Many homeless people are "unaware of the way the system works - that they are probably due a refund if they worked" last year, said Paul Heimer, a 36-year-old employee of the Alexandria shelter who began the effort four years ago when he realized how few of the homeless file tax returns.
The rate at which income taxes usually are withheld assumes the person will work throughout the year. If the person works only part of the year, then too much in taxes may have been withheld and the worker would be due a refund.
That's the case with Efrem Perkins, who worked as a professional cook for seven months last year before he was laid off and lost his housing. With Heimer's help, he has filed a return and expects to get federal and state refunds totaling nearly $1,100.
"Hopefully, by the end of April I'll be moving. I want to get a car and put money in the bank," said the 31-year-old Perkins. "I worked for seven years straight and I never thought I'd be in a position like this."
Perkins is not unlike many other homeless people, according to a survey Heimer conducted last fall. Of 252 residents in 17 Washington, D.C.-area homeless shelters who were surveyed, 85 percent said they had worked at some point in 1990. Of those who worked, 44 percent said they filed federal returns in 1991.
Heimer was a volunteer at the 65-bed, suburban shelter in 1989 when he conceived what has developed into the Homeless Income Tax Self-Help Initiative. A Mr. Mom with a young son and a working wife, he had no tax-filing training, except what he had learned doing his own returns.
From the beginning, the idea has been simple.
"I was hoping to get them [shelter residents] enough money to get them out of here - seed money" for a housing deposit, a car or anything else that would help them get back on their feet, Heimer said.
Heimer concedes that some won't get a refund and might even be found to owe the Internal Revenue Service money. Others, he said, could have their refund tapped for unpaid child support or delinquent student loans.
But for most, the IRS has a check with their name on it, Heimer said.
"This kind of thing is important to dispel some of the stereotypes people have about the homeless," said Joan Alker, assistant director of the National Coalition for the Homeless, an advocacy and education group. "Most people who are homeless, we wouldn't know that unless they chose to tell us. They don't look like the stereotype we have in our minds."
The coalition's surveys have found that about one-third of the homeless are working, she said.
Alker said Heimer's network of tax-filing volunteers appears to be unique, though she knows of some shelters that bring in accountants who donate their time to help residents file their returns.
In one respect, however, Heimer's initiative goes further by aiming not just to get the returns filed but to teach those who are able to fill out the forms themselves.
Thomas Clifton, 28, worked only in December last year and expects to get just $56 refunded. But more important, he said, he now knows how to file his own form - rather than relying as he has on the IRS doing it for him.
"For years, I just signed the form and sent it off for them [the IRS] to do," he said. But when he sat down with Heimer, "he said all you have to do is read it and do exactly what it says to do."
He did, line by line by line, and he'll do it again next year - he's now working two part-time jobs. "I enjoyed it, I really did."
Renetta Graham, 34, who worked five months last year and will get back $729 from the federal government, also said this was the first time she did her own taxes.
"I thought he was going to do it for me," said the single mother of a teen-age son, but instead Heimer showed her how.
"It's being able to accomplish something on your own, like learning something new," she said. "And if you can do that, you can do something else, take on another challenge."
by CNB