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March 20, 2008 A Davidson County Community College accounting student earned real-world experience this spring as a Volunteer Income Tax Assistance (VITA) volunteer by providing free income tax preparation assistance for the public.
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| DCCC accounting student Tammy Long volunteers to prepare income taxes through the VITA program. Also shown is VITA coordinator Bill Gilleland. |
Tammy Long, a scholarship student from Lexington, is a May graduation candidate for the Associate in Science degree in Accounting. She took advantage of two days of free classroom training and certification by the IRS after completing a prequalifying exam.
VITA is a collaborative effort by the IRS and the Davidson County Tax Coalition. As a trained VITA volunteer, Long filed taxes at the Lexington branch of the Davidson County Library five evenings in February and March. She completed tax returns for about 25 people who earned less than $42,000, or who were elderly, disabled or spoke limited English.
Long was recommended for the program by Steve Richards, her accounting instructor at DCCC. “VITA provides an excellent opportunity for students to grow professionally while also serving the community. Tammy Long is in many ways a model student; she is dedicated academically, has excelled in the classroom, and demonstrates a commitment to community service by volunteering to help others,” Richards said.
“I thought it would be a great learning process, something that would give me extra training and one-on-one experience,” said Long. “It was a valuable experience for me. I got to meet people and to see how appreciative they were for the assistance.”
She recalled the pleasure of seeing the reaction of so many people who were surprised to learn they qualified for the federal earned income tax credit that would give them a larger tax refund. “It was gratifying to educate them about that and to know we were saving so many of them a lot of money that they normally would have paid to get their taxes filed.”
After graduating from DCCC on May 13th, Long said she is looking forward to landing a job in a business payroll department. Eventually, she hopes to earn a bachelor’s degree in accounting by taking evening courses at a nearby college or university.
Long worked at Thomasville Furniture Industries as a custom finishing specialist for seven years before the plant shut down. She immediately enrolled at DCCC in January 2006, and she chose accounting because she once owned a small business and enjoyed keeping the books.
She received five scholarships at DCCC so she could study full-time and spend time with her husband and two grown children. She was selected for the North Carolina Association of CPA Scholarship, the Mr. and Mrs. Joseph Gaither Walser Memorial Scholarship, the Doak Finch Memorial Scholarship, the Lexington Civitan Scholarship, and the Lillian Mabry Scholarship.
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