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University Daily Kansan, February 21, 1983
Volunteers relieve tax return woes with free help for struggling filers
By AMY CRAIG Staff Reporter
The time to figure income taxes is here, and for many people tax time brings with it a feeling of uncertainty and anxiety.
But a group of KU volunteers may be able to relieve that feeling by preparing state and federal income tax forms for people in Lawrence, the coordinator of Volunteer Income Tax Assistance said last week.
Mike Martin, Prairie Village law student, said that VITA was a national program that was started in Lawrence by the KU Accounting Club. In the past two years, the service has provided much help to include more of the community.
THE VOLUNTEERS are from the schools of BUSINESS and Law and a few are from the Lawrence community, 41 volunteers, 41 volunteers are working for VITA.
All VITA volunteers are trained to prepare the returns, Volunteers who have not had a tax return preparation course attend a three-day training program conducted by the Internal Revenue Service, Martin said.
People who have taken a tax course are qualified to prepare the returns, he said, and attend a half-day VITA orientation.
Although VTA does not have any specific guidelines about who may use its services, its goal is to provide professional tax assistance to people who cannot afford tax assistance on their own, Martin said.
However Martin said, VITA is not qualified to prepare tax returns for people who are not U.S. citizens.
AND VITA volunteers will not fill out any returns unless they think they can complete them competently, he said.
"If someone comes in with difficult forms, we don't touch them," Martin said.
suit.
The volunteers go over the tax information of the person seeking assistance and determine which tax form to use. They then complete the forms of free charge, Martin said.
Martin said that VITA completed tax forms for 251 people in 1982 and that he thought the service would help more people in developing countries, people who are aware of the group.
Allen Ford, professor of business and faculty adviser of the Accounting
Club, said that VITA had been successful and that he encouraged business students to volunteer for the program.
"IT'S A GOOD experience, even if they can only work for a few hours during the whole program," he said.
during VITA is operating at five locations this year. All will be open through April 15, except March 12-20.
The VITA locations and their hours are:
- Ballard Community Center, 708 Elm St., 842-0729, Wednesdays, 1 to 3 p.m.
- East Central Kansas Economic Opportunity Corp., 311 Main St, 841-3357, by appointment.
- Indian Center of Lawrence, 2325 Louisiana St., 841-7202. Tuesdays and Thursdays. 9 a.m. to noon
- *Legal Aid Society, Monday Hall,
884-5694, Mondays, Tuesdays and
Wednesdays, 6 to 9 p.m., and Sat-
durations, 9 a.m. to noon.
- Penn House, 1035 Pennsylvania St., 842-0440. Tuesdays and Thursdays, noon to 3 p.m.
Form to simplify taxpaying
By SUSAN STANLEY Staff Reporter
Staff Reporter
A new income tax form will make it easier to pay the government this year, an official for the Internal Revenue Service said recently.
Many students will be able to file using the new form, called the 1040E2F form, said James T. Manuszak, an adjunct professor at the national IRS office in Wichita.
regional areas.
People who want to use the new form must be single, under 65, claim only one deduction, and have a taxable income of less than $50,000. They also cannot receive more than $400 in tips and cannot receive any stock dividends, he said.
MANUS2AK SAID the form had resulted from research by the IRS that concluded the present tax filing system could be simplified for people who had few deductions but were eligible to receive a refund.
"It is short and sweet and cheaper to process, too," he said.
About 20 million of the country's 95.5 million taxpayers can qualify to use the form, Manuszak said.
However, a Lawrence tax preparer said she did not think that the new form would have a big effect on taxpayers.
The tax preparer, Carolyn Bell, tax preparation officer for Bell & Hartford Personal Services, 2336 Ridge Court, said she had complied with the form for a customer. The forms will benefit only a few taxavers.
"THEY WON'T make that much
utterence because the group that they are aimed is so small," she said. "It won't affect our business because our customers don't fall into the 1040E2 category. Outside of a college town, the forms won't have much effect."
Manusak said the instructions for the form were easier to understand because of clearer language and better explanation.
The IRS is sponsoring free clinics in some cities, although not in Lawrence, to help people fill out the new forms, he said.
"We are trying to get them to be the ones pushing the pencl," he said. "I call it the no-frills approach to tax paying."
THE RESPONSE to the forms has been positive, Manuszak said.
"Three times the projected number of the forms have been picked up," he said, "but we have no way of telling many we will receive until April."
Manuszak said he did not know whether the forms could be shortened any further in the future.
Shorter forms were used once during the late 1960s, Manuszak said. The entire tax form fit on a computer card.
card.
However, the forms were discontinued because they were inconvenient, he said.
Students can pick up tax forms at the post office in the basement of Strong Hall. Assistance for filling out the forms is available from the Volunteer Income Tax Assistance program of the Douglas County Legal Aid Society, 105 Green Hall.
KVM
A disease once known as the housewife's disease now can be treated effectively with the new use of drug, a physician said Friday.
Kline spoke of his research at a lecture at the University of Kansas Medical Center.
Patients who suffer from agoraphobia, a morbid fear of open places, can now take the drug toferol to relax, said Donk丽 Kline, director of psychiatric research for the New York State Psychiatric Institute.
While giving patients 220 milligrams of toferol a day at a hospital, he said, he noticed that patients complained less of having attacks.
Tferonal relaxes patients and eliminates anticipation of the anxiety attacks that cause agoraphobia, he said.
AFTER A PERSON has his first anxiety attack, which increases blood pressure and heart rate and inhibits breathing. He also causes their causes, Kline said.
"Before, every three or four hours patients would come to the nurse's desk saying that they were dying," he said. "When we started using toferonal, the patients still said they felt terrible, but they didn't run up to the desk anymore."
"We realized that the drug had not eliminated their attacks, but it had eliminated the anticipation of those attacks."
By MICHAEL BECK Staff Reporter
Patients who fear open places aided by drug,physician says
He said that part of the training included group sessions where a group of agoraphobics would go together to a feared place, such as a department store. Two or three agoraphobias would help them part their progress to the others, he said.
The group training, or supportive therapy, lasts one hour each week for 26 weeks. Group training has better results than individual therapy because the agoraphic knows he is not alone in his fear, Kline said.
KLINE SAID agoraphors tended to fear certain things, such as buses, department stores or open fields, and eliminating anticipation allowed doctors to train people not to avoid the things they feared.
But Dean Kerkman, clinical psychologist for KU health services, said he did not agree with using supportive therapy, nor did he agree with using medication to eliminate the anticipatory reactions.
The use of supportive therapy and medication takes longer to treat the patient, he said, because the agoraphobia can live without the drug and other people.
rug and other people.
HE SAID THAT he had had success with another method, which took eight to 10 weeks.
Kerkman, who treats agoraphobics in Lawrence, and he told his patients to keep records of when and where they felt anxious so they could realize the
conditions under which an attack might occur.
Kerkman then teaches the patient to use breathing and muscle relaxing techniques with repetition of certain phrases when an attack is imminent, he
The new skills help the agoraphobic to prevent another anxiety attack and thereby eliminate the anticipation of the attacks, he said.
But despite the research in and the treatments available for ageraphobia, he said, there is no known cause for the first anxiety attack.
KLINE SAID he had tried to induce anxiety attacks to see what caused them.
Thinking that carbon dioxide might have something do with anxiety attacks, he said, he made one group of patients breathe 5 percent more carbon dioxide and asked them to hyperventilate.
Eliminating the anticipation, he said, was a necessary step in finding an effective treatment for agoraphobia.
He said he asked another group of patients to hyperventilate under normal conditions to help build up carbon dioxide in their system to help induce an attack.
The patients who had hyper- ventilated in more carbon dioxide did not have any anxiety attacks, but those with severe anxiety attacks it be said, had several anxiety attacks.
Kerkman said, "It's not that important to know the cause of the initial attack, as long as we can teach the students what skills that help him deal with anxiety."
Police report arrests of Nazi activists
Bv United Press International
A tip-off from a Frankfurt resident led police to an apartment hideout where three neo-Nazi terrorists were arrested last Tuesday, a police spokesman said. Two other members of the gang were picked up in England Friday after an international police hunt.
City forum set for candidates
BONN, West Germany — West German police said yesterday that they still were hunting for a sixth neo-Nazi gang member suspected of involvement in bomb attacks on American soldiers.
The men arrested in West Germany,
9 attack by gunmen on a Jewish restaurant in Paris in which six people were killed and 22 wounded.
Candidates for the Lawrence City Commission will speak to the public for the second time at 7 p.m. today in the Lawrence Elementary School, 810 W. Sixth St.
The 13 candidates will each be allowed four minutes to speak, then will take questions from the audience. The second-minute time limit for their responses.
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were killed by warfare.
Kexel and Tillman also will be questioned about other anti-Jewish attacks in Vienna and London.
French police said they would travel to London to question the two men, Walter Kexel and Ulrich Tillmann, about possible involvement in the Aug.
The Interior Ministry spokesman, who said police from Belgium, France and Britain were involved in the hunt, said another neo-Nazi suspected of involvement in the anti-American bombings still was at large.
BRITISH POLICE said the two other West German terrorist suspects, who were arrested Friday in the southern English town of Poole, will appear in court today for the start of extradition proceedings brought by West German
The field of candidates will be narrowed to six in next Tuesday's primary election. Those six will then compete for three open seats in the general election April 5.
(Did you know you could get a free haircut at Command Performance? Stop by for details.)
843-3985
Dieter Sportler, 22, Hans-Peter Frass, 22, and Helge Blasche, 40, have confessed that they planted three homemade bombs in American-owned cars last Dec. 13 and 14 that wounded two GIs, a West German Interior Ministry spokesman said.
THE FORUM is sponsored by the Pinckney Neighborhood Association, but members of the public are invited to attend.
Hans-Joen Vogel, the Social Democrat candidate for chancellor in March 6 elections, criticized Chancellor Helmut Kohl's Christian Democrats for failing to recognize the danger of neo-Nazi groups.
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