$63.8 Million for the Bay Area

63.8 million

The results are in, and United Way’s Earn It! Keep It! Save It! free tax preparation service for low-income residents helped bring in $63.8 million in refunds to our community. That’s money that will get spent locally, generating jobs, sales, and tax revenue for government services. This news couldn’t come at a better time – [...]

Tax-Season Countdown

Earn It! Keep It! Save It! is helping thousands of Bay Area taxpayers claim all the refunds and tax credits for which they are eligible.

There are 12 days left to file your 2010 tax returns! From January through April, Earn It! Keep It! Save It! is preparing tax returns for low-income individuals and families in seven counties around the Bay Area. The goal of the United Way-led coalition is to help individuals and families claim their maximum benefits and refunds, especially [...]

Demand for Free Tax Help Surges in Bay Area

Earn It! Keep It! Save It! volunteer Aurora Castillo assists a client at San Francisco's MEDA

With approximately one month left in this year’s tax filing season, United Way’s Earn It! Keep It! Save It! has already experienced a 25% increase in demand for free tax preparation services that it provides to low- and moderate-income Bay Area households – those which earned less than $49,000 in 2010.  The Bay Area’s largest free [...]

Oakland Grandmother Learns to Drive Big Rigs

East Oakland resident Jacqueline Countee came to SparkPoint Oakland Center in February to get free tax  filing help, after her brother’s friend, who is a SparkPoint client, referred her.   Free tax help was just the first step for Jackie. “When I first came to SparkPoint, I just came to get my taxes done and to [...]

April 15 is Right Around the Corner…

As we head into the final week of tax season, many of the more than 180 free tax sites across the Bay Area are scrambling to help people who have waited until the last week  to file. Although time is running short, many free sites are still open and have space available help people file [...]

Meet Your Volunteer Tax Site

This past January in Fremont, the mayor, members of the city council, and others gathered at Fremont Family Resource Center to celebrate National Earned Income Tax Credit (EITC) Awareness Day.  During the event, Fremont Family Resource Center was also presented with a $10,000 check by Citi to support their EITC work. According to recent reports, [...]

California Loses $1 Billion from Unclaimed EITC

New research finds California will miss out on more than one billion because an estimated 800,000 eligible Californians will neglect to claim over $1.2 billion in federal Earn Income Tax Credit (EITC) dollars this tax season, according to the new report Left on the Table, published through a collaboration between the New America Foundation and [...]

Speaking the Language of Taxes

When Earn It! Keep It! Save It! said they needed translators fluent in Spanish, Cantonese, Mandarin, and Vietnamese, United Way Community Project MatchBridge was more than happy to respond. Earn It! Keep It! Save It!, a community project of United Way of the Bay Area, is a free, tax-preparing service offered to qualifying individuals and [...]

Undocumented Workers Tackle Their Taxes

Did you know that paying income taxes is the law for anyone who earns wages in the United States, including undocumented immigrants? Each year, United Way’s Earn It! Keep It! Save It! provides free tax filing assistance to thousands of undocumented workers in the Bay Area, helping them to participate in our country’s tax system. [...]

"I Can't Get Enough"

A few weeks ago, during our event at the Commonwealth Club, Director of PR Maria Stokes, caught up with Corrin Buchanan, the Community Programs Director at the Women’s building in San Francisco. According Corrin, there is a lot of demand for their free tax services, and she noted that a lot of people who’ve made [...]