ABA Tax Section Military VITA Pro Bono Project Seeks Writers For State Tax Guide

From James Steele (Morgan, Lewis & Bockius, Washington, D.C.):

As part of the ABA Tax Section's Military VITA pro bono effort, we have recently taken over an important, ongoing resource for Military VITA sites. We will be updating and maintaining, on a go-forward basis, a State Tax Guide that compiles relevant state income tax topics and issues that are specific to members of the Military. For reference, and as a way to provide a sense of the volunteer commitment, I have attached a sample state from the current version of the Guide. The state-specific guides range from one to four pages, and the volunteer's job is simply to review and make any relevant updates to ensure accuracy and repeat this task each December in preparation for tax season.

We are looking for one or more volunteers to adopt each state with a state income tax, plus Washington, DC, to help review and update the Guide. By dividing the document by state, the time commitment of each volunteer should be very minimal. If you are interested in signing up for more than just your state, we welcome that too. The audience for the Guide is Military members (often with no prior tax background), so we are trying to keep it very readable and limit it to the most common issues. This volunteer opportunity is ideal for new attorneys, retired attorneys, non-attorneys, and anyone in between. It also could be a group effort at a firm. No prior experience is necessary, and the information is easily attainable by researching online.

For this resource to get the most use for the 2020 filing season, we would like to start circulating the final document to the Military VITA sites by January 22. If you are interested, please fill out the sign-up form by December 23. We would like to receive the updated sections of the Guide by or around January 8, to give sufficient time to review the updates and consolidate them into a final version to put into circulation.

If you would like to sign up, please complete this VERY short information form.

If you have any questions, please don't hesitate to reach out to me. I am a Vice Chair of the Pro Bono & Tax Clinics Committee and will be managing this project.