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Bringing with him over 20 years of enterprise development experience, Gene came to CFED from Nebraska in July 2000 as a special advisor to CFED’s community development finance arm. Gene started to ask himself, “How can low-income entrepreneurs get help filing their tax returns while also making their businesses more viable?”

Gene’s “eureka moment” came from a conversation with a colleague working at a Volunteer Income Tax Assistance (VITA) site in Queens, NY. She explained her work with clients and how she helped them access the Earned Income Tax Credit (EITC). That conversation turned on a light bulb in Gene’s head and he quickly saw that the EITC could help not only wage and salary earners, but also self-employed small business owners. EITC can provide thousands of dollars of capital that can be reinvested in the small business and can help self-employed individuals with household expenses.

The result of that insight and much hard work by Gene and his colleagues was the major initiative CFED now calls SETI. SETI has already provided free tax preparation services to over 20,000 low-income entrepreneurs, saved them a whopping $6 million in tax preparation fees and generated over $13.5 million in business capital.

Gene’s vision is still taking SETI in new directions and to greater impact. State and federal policy initiatives and market delivery mechanisms hold great potential for reaching thousands and even millions of small business owners and self-employed Americans.

Gene is now a proud grandfather and semi-retired. Despite all of the incredible accomplishments he can claim, he remains humble, noting that he’s been lucky to have had some of the right ideas at the right time.

For more information about Gene or about the Self-Employment Tax Initiative, click here.

Gene Severens is Senior Advisor to SETI, the Self-Employment Tax Initiative, and was previously Director of the Initiative. Prior to joining CFED, Gene worked in rural microenterprise development in Nebraska and in 1994 founded the Nebraska Microenterprise Partnership Fund.

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