Alaska is wild, cold, and dotted with remote villages whose residents rely on the Volunteer Income Tax Assistance (VITA) program for free income tax return preparation. Alaska Business Development Center (ABDC) meets this need, serving 176 communities across the vast state. ABDC depends on trained, VITA-certified volunteers to travel annually to communities to prepare returns and answer tax questions.
This past filing season, the Tax Section sponsored a team of certified volunteers who prepared returns and analyzed tax questions in four Alaskan villages. Six Tax Section members – Susan Morgenstern, Leslie McLean (a Tax Analysts Fellow), Mandi Matlock, Karen Lapekas, Kelly Erb, and Alex Bartlow – traveled to Chevak, Kotzebue, Point Hope, and Point Lay to prepare returns for taxpayers residing there. The volunteers completed approximately 380 returns over five days.
Many of the villages ABDC serves are wholly inaccessible except by front-propellered, seven-to-10-seater bush planes most of the year – or by boat during the few months when the surrounding seas and inland rivers aren’t frozen. The bush planes transporting the tax preparers and their gear also carry food, water, medicine, and other supplies for the village residents. (During hunting, fishing, and whaling seasons, planes also transport tubs of salmon, whale, and caribou meat.)
The tax preparation teams are a traveling office. Departing from Anchorage, they carry a printer, paper, toner, office supplies, laptops, and required forms to the villages. Their traveling office also includes a phone equipped to use local cell phone networks.
In addition, the teams carry all personal (and perhaps survival) items they may need:
This self-sufficient traveling office is subject to weight restrictions. The office supplies tote cannot exceed 50 pounds, and personal bags cannot exceed 40 pounds. Bags – and passengers fully dressed for the minimally heated bush planes – are weighed at the hub airports before departing on the small bush planes.
Participants’ training is thorough. Each volunteer obtains VITA’s advanced certification level, which can also be used in volunteers’ home communities’ VITA sites. In addition, ABDC requires an online training session and the completion of several practice scenarios to ensure team members are prepared for the unique return situations volunteers might encounter among Alaskan Native taxpayers. If volunteers were stumped while in the villages, ABDC was available by phone to talk through the tax return puzzle. Knowing this assistance was available was especially comforting as internet access has limited to no availability in many Alaskan villages.
This past filing season was a repeat trip for two Section members: Morgenstern traveled in 2024 with two other members for what she described as the experience of a lifetime. For her, the opportunity to assist and learn from Native Alaskans was one she could not pass up. Additionally, Matlock traveled for the third time; volunteering in rural Alaska checked all the boxes for her: intrepid travel, tax law, and helping people remain tax compliant.
This trip was especially valuable for McLean. A Tax Analysts fellow, McLean works with the Navajo, Hopi, and Havasupai peoples in Arizona, New Mexico and Utah. One goal of her fellowship is to develop a strong VITA program for these communities. This filing season there were only two VITA sites available on the Navajo Nation, the largest Indian reservation in the United States with a land area of over 27,000 miles. This cross-cultural experience provided the opportunity to observe how other organizations are providing free income tax services to Native communities and to use what is being done by ABDC as a model for what can be done in the tribal communities in which she works. McLean especially enjoyed observing the similarities between Alaskan Natives and Navajos (clan relationships) as well as the differences (delicacies of fried seal vs. frybread).
Notably, the Section adopted this program in Alaska to expand its pro bono reach to underserved communities otherwise unable to access tax assistance. Isolated by geography and technology, the Section’s partnership with ABDC ensures filing compliance in communities without other filing and tax assistance resources.
The annual trips provide a unique window into Native Alaskans’ life. In Chevak, home of the Cup'ik people, the team witnessed the ferocity with which this community is protecting its heritage, including summer paid internships for high schoolers to learn the making of harpoons, beading, basketry, and fur clothing, all of which are used in the annual hunting, fishing, and berry picking cycles. (And these students needed tax returns, our opportunity to welcome them into the tax preparation world!) The will to sustain this heritage is so strong that English is taught as a second language in the school, and Cup'ik language, history, and culture classes are a mainstay of the school's curriculum. For the team spending the week in Chevak, two facets stand out. One was the morning conversations over coffee with a village elder who shared the history and culture of the Cup'ik people. The other was an invitation to observe the drumming and dance practice, in anticipation of the upcoming Coastal villages festival. Indeed, the Chevak team prepared returns listening to the local radio station playing a call-in show conducted in Yup’ik and Cup’ik languages, traditional drumming and chanting music, as well as contemporary country western artists.
Sitting on a river just inland from the Bering Sea, Chevak’s temperatures were in the single digits just above zero. We walked to work on a frozen lake! The team traveling above the Arctic Circle experienced a more contained visit. That team saw temperatures below zero and a blizzard which delayed their return to Anchorage. Both teams tasted local delicacies: herring eggs, seal meat, muktuk (bonehead whale blubber), beluga whale, and cloudberries. Not many Section members can claim to be whale meat connoisseurs!
One emotion stands out above all others, and that is the pride we felt in being members of the Tax Section. Tremendously satisfying, this work exemplified an important facet of the Section’s pro bono work, and that is to provide the highest quality legal assistance to all taxpayers, particularly those who are economically vulnerable.
Please contact Meg Newman, [email protected], to learn more about this initiative and other Section pro bono programs.
