Impact America-Tennessee has announced SaveFirst, a new program to train college, graduate, and law students to provide free tax preparation services and opportunities for savings to low-income, working families. Rhodes is one of the schools participating and this semester will offer a course on taxation and the working poor with a requirement of service learning with the SaveFirst initiative.
Open to all majors, the course is being taught by Ferron Thompson of the Rhodes Department of Business. “When we introduced the program, students from across campus responded enthusiastically, but we weren’t surprised because Rhodes is so service oriented,” says Dr. Pamela Church, interim department chair and coordinator of Rhodes’ SaveFirst.
The Rhodes program will consist of classroom instruction, tax preparation training, completion of a tax certification test and volunteer tax preparation at the Binghampton Community Development Center. The University of Memphis and Christian Brothers University will offer similar courses.