On Saturdays at Rancho Cucamonga High School, the indoor and outdoor campus can resemble a community carnival.
Last week, at 7:30 a.m., teams of flag-carrying, spandex-clad, color guards warmed up for a competition on whatever piece of concrete was available. The arrangement began for a Black cultural celebration.
And on a lower level, in a classroom full of a “Cash for College” meeting and a study session for AP Chinese students, a group of teenagers filled out tax returns for anyone who had heard about their free clinic.
Three generations of a family came, having heard about the clinic from the fourth – great-grandmother. They brought along a brand new dependent: a 2-month-old baby. A boy in a Spider-Man costume watched Spider-Man videos while his grandparents received help. Two retirees – a Harley enthusiast and another who arrived on an electric bike – also checked in.
That anyone would trust high school students to prepare their returns is to do a little-known service called VITA, which stands for Volunteer Income Tax Assistance. It’s an Internal Revenue Service program that trains people to help their neighbors with annual homework.
To participate, students must go through some sort of Income Tax 101 curriculum and then take a Form 6744 exam. (The IRS has a form or publication for basically everything.)
At Rancho, as everyone refers to the school, students work under the guidance of Chris Van Duin, who has taught accounting there for 22 years. Every January, he starts showing up just after sunrise on Saturdays with breakfast burritos for his students.
The day I was there, she was playing soft jazz. In his office, one screen displayed information about the clinic’s clients, while another had the Manchester United-Fulham football match on mute. His cell phone rang every now and then, because the clients of the clinic have his personal number.
The students entered. Calob Chavez, 17, wants to be an investment banker. Destiny Linda, 17, hopes to get a doctorate in business someday. Many of them are now looking over their parents’ shoulders to make sure they file their tax returns on time and get every deduction.
There is no predicting who can show up each Saturday. An identity theft victim was trying to use a special PIN to file her taxes. Another did his taxes for the first time in seven years. He sat down with seven neat stacks of paper in front of him. It looked like he would owe over $10,000.
“I wouldn’t wish this on my worst enemy,” said Nicholas Rosales, a 16-year-old junior who took his first accounting class a year ago and is now Mr. Van Duin’s teaching assistant.
Every tax return tells a story. Where do you live? What are you doing? What kind of income does this generate? Who are you raising, housing and helping — and how?
Reading even one return — let alone the 250 or so that Rancho students put their hands on last year — is something of an object lesson in personal finance. Ask the person behind the numbers the right questions and you can learn a lot about how the world works and the paths to make your way through it.
When I first met with the students, they were confused by someone who was scheduled to come the next day. He had five jobs in 2023. “How do people balance so many?” Nicholas asked.
On Saturday morning, Abigail Jimenez, 27, introduced herself and explained. She had started the year as a hairdresser-supply store manager. After a brief stint as a part-time receptionist, a hair salon competitor offered her a job and she jumped.
Then, he decided to change careers. Around the same time, she and her boyfriend moved and she got a new job at a leasing company. Finally, as her professional interests shifted to numbers, she got a job at an accounting firm, although they don’t file returns until later in the year, including those of her employees.
She wanted her money back, if any, as soon as possible, so she came to the clinic.
By 10am, there were so many customers that there were no students left to help them. Teams huddled around computer screens, entering key information into TaxSlayer, a software program. The guy with the seven returns was still there, coming in and out of the room every now and then to talk on the phone.
Would he like to comment? “Oooooh,” he said, tilting his head back before refusing to say anything else.
Work ends every Saturday at noon. In class, students complete returns that they did not complete during the Saturday rush.
This year Nikolaos did his own taxes for the first time. “I work at Taco Bell,” he said. “I received an $8 refund. With $8 I can buy more candy.”
But those refunds can get bigger over time if you know what to look for. “There are people who don’t have that knowledge,” Destiny said. “They miss a lot of opportunities.”
