By Chelsea Vance | The Selma Times-Journal

Impact Alabama’s Save First initiative is offering free tax preparation services by appointment at Wallace Community College Selma.

Services are limited to working families who are making less than $52,000 a year with children in the home or $20,000 a year without children in the home.

This is the tenth year that the program has been in existence, but the second year it has been at WCCS.

Executive Director of Impact Alabama Sarah Louise Smith said the program was started to lend helping hands to hard working families.

“We started this program to address the need for free tax preparation services across the state of Alabama. Our goal is to ensure that families don’t have to pay a lot of money to get their taxes prepared,” Smith said.

Save First has been partnering with college campuses to train student volunteers on how to prepare taxes.

The training includes learning a tax law and tax preparation software tool. Students have to pass a certification test from the IRS before they are allowed to perform any services.

“Students will be under the supervision of a highly trained site coordinator. Families can come in and bring their tax documents and we’ll prepare their return, we’ll file it for them and help them get direct deposit of a refund,” smith said.

The site coordinator reviews all work of the students and actually files the tax returns. Students who are volunteering are receiving course credit for volunteering with Save First.

“We are excited to provide a free service for families who are working really hard to assure that they get the full tax benefits that they are entitled to,” Smith said.

“We have a lot of students that can help prepare taxes. We’re ready to help families get their taxes prepared.”

Last year, over 570 trained students from more than sixteen campuses prepared tax returns for more than 8,200 families in cities statewide. Its statewide campus collaboration helped working families secure more than $14.9 million in tax refunds, saving them over $2.5 million in commercial tax preparation fees.

Save First is hoping to serve about 9,000 families over the state of Alabama this year with a goal to expand their presence in Selma.

Wallace College is located at 3000 Earl Goodwin Parkway in Selma. Services are held in room 101 of the administration building.

Those who are interested should call (888) 998-2925 for free appointments.