The Graduate School is proud to announce that we are now partnering with TerpTax and the Robert H. Smith School of Business to provide a free, comprehensive tax preparation service for UMD graduate students. TerpTax, which is housed in the Robert H. Smith School of Business, is a Volunteer Income Tax Assistance (VITA) chapter, which is a program created by the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) to provide FREE tax return preparation to low-to-mid-income individuals and families, the elderly, students, and persons with disabilities. TerpTax has been providing services on campus since 2015. This partnership between TerpTax and the Graduate School allows TerpTax to provide comprehensive tax preparation services to our campus and community, especially graduate students. International graduate students are also welcome to use Glacier Tax Prep to assist with preparing tax returns. We hope you can take advantage of this exciting opportunity for tax preparation assistance.
Important Information about TerpTax
The goals of TerpTax are to help clients maintain compliance with the tax law, maximize their tax savings, and to educate the public about taxes. This is a free program for low-to-middle income individuals, families, students and persons with disabilities.
Registration for TerpTax is not required, but recommended. Please go to terptax.org and at the top of the page, you will see a square that says “register now”. Click on that and you will be taken to a page where you pick a 30 minute time slot to get assistance with your taxes. Please be sure to enter your email address correctly so they can contact you.
TerpTax operates Monday through Thursday from 6-9pm beginning on February 18th and closing on April 10th. The program is at the Robert H. Smith School of Business Rm. 3522, 7621 Mowatt Lane, College Park, MD 20742.
To get the most out of your session, please review the TerpTax website. Please bring all required material with you to your appointment. All of your materials are required in order for TerpTax to assist you in preparing your return. To review the TerpTax website please go here: http://www.terptax.org/clients.html. For information from the IRS on what to bring to yourappointment, please go here: https://www.irs.gov/individuals/checklist-for-free-tax-return-preparation. If you are an international student and are using Glacier Tax Prep, please bring your computer with GTP available. It is most beneficial if you work through as much of GTP as you can and bring your specific questions to your appointment.
If you have questions about TerpTax, please visit their website. If you have questions for the Graduate School, please email gradschool@umd.edu or call 301-405-3644.
International students please review the following from TerpTax directly:
- First, we at VITA have expanded our available time slots for appointments. Go to website http://www.slyreply.com/app/sheets/2b5jpc2uzscp/ for this sign up. We have lots of people awaiting to help.
- Second, international students should not use Turbo Tax since turbo Tax does not do 1040-NR. We have already seen too many people who have used Turbo Tax and have erroneously used form 1040 to file their return instead of 1040-NR. We are in the process of filing amended returns for these errors, but it is a tedious process.
- We will have expanded weekend options on the web site in a few days. These will be for the end of March.