Instances where i finished the return and told the

instances where I finished the return and told the client that he or she was going to receive a
refund, and they literally laughed at me. For many people, they are in so much debt to the IRS
that every refund they receive is immediately seized. It was also interesting to notice how
distrustful many people were of “the establishment.” I received many comments similar to
above, where I told the client they would get a refund and they would respond “no way the IRS
lets me get my hands on that,” or something else along those lines. It was clear from these
comments that these people had been unjustly treated by the government in the past, and

maintain a distrust based on that experience. As someone who has never had a particularly
negative interaction with the government or IRS, it was eye-opening to see what opinions
different type of people have about our government.
Finally, a large benefit of the Vita program was how much it helped me learn about tax.
Sitting in a classroom memorizing tax laws and doing practice problems is all well and good, and
certainly necessary. However, the real learning happens when you’re in the field, sitting at a
computer with a client actually applying your learning. It was important for me to appear
knowledgeable to my clients, so that they would trust my advice and be less skeptical about how
their return was filed. Therefore, I tried to avoid looking through my materials too much
throughout the process. This means I had to really know my stuff, so I made sure to review items