Uptown Radio

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HOST INTRO:
Tuesday is Tax Day. A D.C. area holiday gives filers an extra two days this year.
If you haven’t filed yet, there’s still time. But don’t let the deadline rush get to you. Jason Slotkin reports;

Dennis Wang filed his tax return weeks ago.
But the college senior has spent his spring break filling out other people’s 1040 forms. He oversees a free student run tax service for low-income households. The service is at Baruch College library.

He’s been there for 50 hours this week, along with 175 other student volunteers tabulating deductions and credits, while other classmates are in Florida or Cancun. He says it rewarding.

Dennis Wang
To see a client smile or have a client thanks us is a similar experience. It’s probably a better experience than going to Cancun

Wang says, the students help between 50 to 100 people a day
Even more are coming this week. For those filing their taxes themselves… on deadline. Rushing can lead to errors, rejected applications and late fees.

Dianne Besunder is a spokeswoman for the IRS in New York.
She says most people make really simple mistakes including messing up on basic math.

Dianne Besunder
Be careful. Check those numbers. Do em twice. Make sure everything looks good….People will file a completely correct return and forget to sign it.

Besunder says most mistakes are made on the paper form which require filers to do the math themselves.
She suggest instead to file electronically. It checks the math for you will notify you immediately about whether or not your return has been accepted. Besunder says electronic applications has a less than one percent rate of error.

David Sands is a CPA, whose been working nearly 70 hours this past week.
There are potential deductions, you can miss out on. Some mistakes can warrant a letter from the IRS. Sands says take your time, however long you may need.

David Sands
If you don’t want to spend the time there’s plenty of professionals out there.

Jason Slotkin
Also, filing your taxes…There’s an app for that.
I caught up with Anthony Rivera on the Upper West Side. He filed his taxes with an iPhone app.

AMBI BRIDGE
SOUNDS OF STREET
All he did was fill out the form and snap a picture of it with his phone. Of course, Rivera filed his return months ago. He doesn’t recommend filing your taxes at the last minute

Anthony Rivera
I wouldn’t wait until the last minute. It’s like cramming for a test,. I’d try and get a head start on it.

In summation, best way to to file your taxes. Start Immediately. Jason Slotkin. Columbia Radio News.

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Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner testified before the Senate Finance Committee last Wednesday. Susan Walsh/AP Photo

Representative Todd Akin, a Republican from Missouri, read about it in the paper. So when Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner was sitting before him at a hearing of the House Budget Committee on Wednesday, he thought he would bring it up.

“It appears from a WSJ article that we’re going to increase the IRS budget by 9.4% and hiring 5,000 or 5,100 agents at the cost of 460 billion dollars,” said Akin.

Its actually 460 million dollars. That puts the total boost to the IRS budget at 1.1 billion dollars. But whatever the numbers it doesn’t make sense to Akin.

“Not to mention the fact that it would make us look better if we didn’t have a goon squad 5000 more IRS agents tromping around the country with the economy the way it is,” said Akin.

“I hope we’re not being reckless about talking about the people who work for as being part of a goon squad,” said Earl .

Blumenauer is a Democratic Representative  from Oregon. Where his colleague sees excess, he sees a need.

“I’ve met with accountants and attorneys in my community who wonder why in the heck we’re not auditing anymore,” said Blumenauer.

Treasury Secretary Geithner told the House Committee why such a budget increase makes sense in hard times.

“All the people that look carefully into how the IRS works say that if you put a dollar carefully into enforcement, customer service things like that, you get more than four dollars back,” said Geithner. “Why is that fair? It’s because by helping people meet their obligations you make sure that other people are baring too heavily the cost of being citizens of the country.”

In Obama’s budget plan, the 5,100, new IRS employees would mostly work in customer service and technical jobs. It should make it easier for Americans to file tax returns.

Eric Toder, co-director of think thank, the Tax Policy Center, agrees that we should beef up enforcement.

“Audit rates are not high in historical terms and there’s huge amount of non-compliance particularly among small businesses,” said Toder. “Most wage earners because of withholding pay virtually all the taxes they owe.”

But coming down on small business could stifle growth. That’s according to Jeff Stier, a Senior Fellow at the National Center for Public Policy Research.

“Its really business that brings us out of recession,” said Stier. ”The best thing government can do is get out of the way and allow business to operate. Rather than hiring more agents breathing down everyone’s neck, perhaps they ought to consider simplifying the tax code.”

Eric Toder, of the Tax Policy Center, says that for now, we need to work with what we have.

“The question of what tax laws should be is really a separate question,” said Toder. “The tax laws now are what they are. If there were a simpler tax code maybe we could have a smaller IRS. But we don’t have that.”

In their budget, Republicans would actually cut the IRS by 1 percent.