SAN ANTONIO – It is the middle of a busy tax season and News 4 WOAI is finding out workers with the city’s Volunteer Income Tax Assistance Program (VITA) were recently hit with a big problem causing backlogs.
That issue, according to Richard Keith with the Department of Community Initiatives, was a technical matter. Keith says it was centered around the “TaxWise” software the Internal Revenue Service wants VITA to use when filing thousands of taxes electronically.
“It’s really affected our ability to get all of the returns back in the time that we say we are going to get them back,” said Keith.
Keith blames unexpected TaxWise software updates, on two occasions, for rejecting completed tax returns sent to the IRS. He says his staff was busy addressing the issue over the weekend.
“We had staff in both Saturday and Sunday, getting the backlog of returns that we had to re-transmit cleaned up,” Keith said.
Most taxpayers never noticed a problem, according to VITA Program workers. Keith says only a few people expecting rapid returns may have experienced delays.
“We believe the problem is behind us now,” according to Keith.
The Volunteer Income Tax Assistance Program is available to anyone in San Antonio who brings home less than $55-thousand per year. Last year, VITA workers prepared 39-thousand tax returns for free. The program expects to help 41 percent more people this year.
You can find out more about VITA and its locations at www.vitasa.org.
