Tax time: AARP helps hundreds with taxes each year

Taxes take enough of a bite out of a person’s pocketbook without them also having to pay through the nose for someone to do their tax return.

That’s why the AARP Tax-Aide program is here to help.

Retired volunteers who understand taxes offer free tax preparation, counseling and filing every Monday and Tuesday from 9 a.m. to 2 p.m. through April 14 at the Central Baptist Church’s annex building facing Lexington Avenue.

Cynthia Powell, former principal at Strode Station Elementary, who was managing a group of volunteers this week, said the service is for retired and elderly persons, those with low incomes, but really, almost anyone.

She said AARP had helped about 180 people so far and would probably assist about 600 before Income Tax Day, April 15.

No appointment is necessary.

“They just come in,” she said. “Normally, we’ll do about 30 a day.”

Mostly they do the returns in Winchester, but one day, she said, they went to Stanton to do them.

On Monday, the group had six counselors to do the returns and a couple of other volunteers, one of them being her, to check them.

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