Helping the Needy Crack the Tax Code; For some families, a refund means food and shelter. Too many don't know how to claim what's theirs.(financial consultant organizes volunteers to prepare tax returns for low-income families)

Publication: Newsweek

Publication Date: 26-APR-04

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Byline: Bob Burke, Burke lives in Chicago.

I was fresh out of college and working as a finance consultant in 1994 when I volunteered for my firm's tutoring-and-mentoring program at Holy Family School on Chicago's impoverished West Side. I coached a fifth- and sixth-grade basketball team, but I felt that there was only so much I could do to truly help my kids. Without money to buy food or clothing or sometimes even to keep the heat on, the families in the neighborhood faced a daily struggle that weighed heavily on the children.

One day I had an idea. I knew the federal government had tax credits to ease the burden on working-poor families, but the process for claiming these credits was simply too complicated for most to...

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