Stay Informed!

By Lauren Williams and Carl Rist on 10/03/2011 @ 01:30 PM

Tags: Entrepreneurship

Community colleges have long been an important local resource for economic development. A key part of this is the academic, workforce and career development training that all community colleges offer. Beyond this, many community colleges are a resource for small businesses, offering training and guidance, often through a Small Business Development Center.

In King County, Washington, Highline Community College has taken a new approach to providing support to small businesses that uses the tax preparation process as a way to reach self-employed entrepreneurs. In particular, during the 2011 tax season, StartZone provided free tax assistance to small business owners using volunteers from the community and accounting students from the community college. Other partners included the Washington Community Alliance for Self Help (Washington CASH), Seattle Housing Authority, United Way of King County and Key Bank.

Key results from this effort during the 2011 tax season include:

• StartZone prepared 60 tax returns for self-employed filers between February 1 and April 15, 2011, a 20% compared to the previous tax season.
• More than 85% of the self-employed tax filers served at StartZone earned less than $40,000 in Adjusted Gross Income (AGI) in 2010.
• About 32% of the self-employed filers served at StartZone qualified for the EITC (average refund amount was $2,090). In addition, 45% of the self-employed filers received the $400 Make Work Pay tax credit, while another 15% received an average of $1,075 in the form of a Child Tax Credit.
• About half of the business owners they served were committed to and focused on growing their businesses; the other half were earning self-employment income from ventures pursued alongside full or part-time employment.

To learn more about this innovative effort, click here.

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