MONMOUTH, Ill. — For many individuals, tax season is certainly taxing. The stressful time of meeting the April 15 deadline is often magnified by a failure to find the exact information that the taxpayer needs to file correctly.

Since its inception in 2000, Monmouth College’s Volunteer Income Tax Assistance (VITA) program has been doing its best to make tax season a kinder, gentler time, not to mention a more profitable one. For starters, VITA does not charge for its services, and it prepared 451 free returns this year, a 9 percent increase from its record total last year. Those returns pumped $376,000 in tax refunds back into the local economy, and an additional $42,180 was saved in tax preparation funds.

But the popular service also relieves stress through its people. In its annual satisfaction survey, which drew results from 235 taxpayers, the Monmouth program scored its highest marks in the area of customer courtesy, as 94 percent of the respondents gave their volunteer the highest possible marks. One hundred percent of the respondents said they would use the program again and would recommend it to a friend needing assistance. The latter number is consistent with the survey’s results for how individuals learned about VITA, as "word of mouth" scored highest, followed by previous use and newspaper coverage.

"Everyone was polite and very kind," wrote one client. "I really appreciate the help."

"This is a very good thing," wrote another. "The girl who did ours was very friendly and explained everything."

Monmouth College accounting professor Judy Peterson, who has coordinated the program since its inception, added that the survey showed that "the majority of our constituents earn less than $32,000, and those folks are the ones we are trying to target."

The constituents span the spectrum in age, with nearly one-fourth being younger than 25 and another quarter being 60 or older.

VITA is a win-win proposition, because it not only assists area taxpayers, but also provides valuable experience for the students who volunteer.

Those 23 students were also surveyed, and they gave high marks for the program’s classroom portion, which this year counted toward the college’s Citizenship requirement.

"I am pleased with those results, given the Citizenship course’s pilot status this year," said Peterson. "It was better than expected. I would like to work on ways to more thoroughly evaluate students on their readings in the course."

The students clearly enjoy and benefit from the other portion of the course, the hands-on tax preparing experience.

"One reason for having the students do seven sessions is so that they do have the opportunity to experience as many issues as possible," said Peterson. "For the last two years, I ensured that each students experienced the exhilaration of the first two weeks of tax sessions at least once. It is an extraordinary experience for them."