PORTLAND, Ore. (KOIN) – For low- to moderate-income Oregonians who struggle to navigate how to pay their taxes or who feel like they might be missing out on tax credits, there’s a local nonprofit that provides tax help for free.
Creating Assets, Savings and Hope Oregon, better known as MFS CASH Oregon, is a program operated by the organization Metropolitan Family Service. It provides free, high-quality tax preparation and culturally responsive outreach to people likely to face barriers to accessing tax credits.
According to the Oregon Center for Public Policy, Oregon was once among the states least likely to benefit from the Earned Income Tax Credit, a tax credit designed for low-wage families. However, in 2019, data showed Oregon was above the national average.
Despite this, the Oregon Center for Public Policy says tens of thousands of Oregonians, about one in five, still remain eligible for the Earned Income Tax Credit but do not claim it.
MFS CASH Oregon Director Riley Eldredge said that’s a main reason why the program started in 2005. They wanted to make sure people were getting as much money back as they could to support themselves.
“It’s not so much like, ‘Oops, I forgot to put on the Child Tax Credit. Oops, I forgot to put the Earned Income Tax Credit on my tax return.’ What we’re seeing is folks on the ground have a lot of barriers associated with the tax code itself,” he explained.
Those barriers can include things like understanding the complexity of the tax code, not speaking English fluently, and not having access to the internet to file taxes online.
So, CASH Oregon helps people overcome these obstacles by providing free tax preparation for households with an income of $60,000 or less.
The program recruits, trains and organizes volunteers to offer the service throughout the Portland area at 16 different sites. In the 2023 tax season, MFS CASH Oregon has about 260 volunteers and Eldredge said they hope to complete about 6,000 tax returns.
In 2022, they helped return about $8 million in tax credits to people, but that’s just a small fraction of the $100 million to $130 million the Oregon Center for Public Policy estimates Oregonians leave unclaimed every year.
The volunteers are given annual tests to ensure they’re familiar with the current tax codes and each volunteer must go through about 40 to 50 hours of training.
It’s a lot of work, but Eldredge said volunteering is extremely rewarding. He recounted a story of a woman MFS CASH Oregon helped in the summer of 2022. She hadn’t received stimulus checks during the pandemic and when volunteers helped her file her taxes, between the credits she received and the stimulus checks she was finally able to claim, the woman walked away with $5,000.
“We did a brief interview and just talking to her [we asked] what does this mean?” Eldredge said. “And she’s like, ‘This is keeping me in a home right now. This is making sure that I’m not going to be houseless… I can pay next month’s rent now because of this.’”
Volunteers range from retired CPAs and IRS workers, to people who still work in tax services and want to give back to the community, to college students who want to practice their accounting skills.
Eldredge said MFS CASH Oregon can always use more volunteers. There never seems to be a shortage of clients. Every year, people flock to the program looking for assistance and they often have to turn people away because there aren’t enough volunteers to help.
However, he said there are still opportunities for people to get assistance preparing their taxes before they’re due on Tax Day, April 18, 2023. Anyone interested should visit CASHOregon.org or call (503) 243-7765. The program operates year-round, so people can also request help outside of tax season.
Eldredge reminds people that they have three years to be able to access tax credits they never claimed, MFS CASH Oregon can help people receive those. Stimulus money from the pandemic is also still available to claim for anyone who never received their payments.
MFS CASH Oregon’s hundreds of volunteers can provide services in about 25 different languages. For anyone who speaks a language volunteers aren’t familiar with, the program partners with the Immigrant & Refugee Community Organization for translation services.
“It can just be really amazing thinking about how this small intervention, while it can be so incredibly challenging for folks, can be just so rewarding at the end,” Eldredge said.
MFS CASH Oregon is just one of Metropolitan Family Service’s multiple programs. The nonprofit works within the greater Portland and Southwest Washington area to support services such as early childhood development, economic well-being and community-based health and wellness.
Editor’s note: A previously published version of this article included 2018 data from the Oregon Center for Public Policy. The article has since been updated to include 2019 data.