Lotus Light Launches on-site Free Income Tax Clinic in March
Lotus Light Charity Society (Vancouver) has organized volunteers trained by the CRA Community Income Volunteer Tax Program (CVITP) to provide free tax filing services for low-income seniors, people with disabilities, families receiving social assistance, students and newcomers in the community during the tax filing season from March to the end of April every year.
At 1 p.m. on March 11, 2023, the tax clinic site of the Lotus Light Activity Hall ushered in the first group of low income residents seeking tax filing assistance after the Pandemic, and they are greeted by the volunteers who had not seen each other for three years.
According to charity’s tax clinic volunteers, in the past three years since the outbreak of the COVID-19 Pandemic in 2020, many seniors without family help and people without computers in the community have been unable to receive free tax filing services due to the change to remote virtual tax filing. Onsite tax filing has been reopened this year, with a marked increase in people seeking appointments, and the volunteers trained by the CVITP are overwhelmed. Especially when encountering some more complex cases, or the seniors who need a lot of patience to explain their tax situation, it’s taking more time to deal with. Therefore, the charity specially assigned greeting volunteer to give assistance to those who were waiting to file tax returns to pre-fill their information. The prescreening assistance making sure all information from those need tax filing service are ready before their turn, which has greatly saved the time of tax filing process, and the assistance was well received by the public.
Due to the limited number of trained volunteers, Lotus Light is unable to provide more comprehensive services, so there are still some people who need help cannot make appointments. Lotus Light wish more people with tax filing preparation training could join the Lotus Light tax filing volunteer team. For enquiries or to make an appointment for the free Tax Clinic, please visit the website of Lotus Light: www.vllcs.org, call at 604-685-5548, or email llcsvancouver@gmail.com, Lotus Light Charity Society’s Registration Number: BN 14110-4893-RR0001.
