Taxation + Immigration

In fact, the US government could use failure to file as a reason not to renew an expiring visa. This is why Morrow and her volunteers push to get the word out to students and researchers, not just at Suffolk but at colleges and universities across the Boston area, including Harvard, Northeastern, MIT, and Tufts.

“Sometimes we’ll have someone at the clinic who’s working on a ground-breaking cancer treatment but is scared about how to file their taxes,” Morrow said. “So we tell them: ‘This is one thing we can do for you. You don’t have to worry about learning the entire US tax system.’ They can come to the clinic while they’re in the country working on their research, and we can take that tax-filing burden off their minds.”

Prepping the preppers

With such a complicated issue, one would assume the student preparers need to be experts. Actually, when the clinic starts, most of them have never filled out a tax return for anyone—let alone an international student holding a complicated visa.

“They usually look completely shell-shocked,” says Morrow with a laugh, describing the students on the first day of training. “They’re scared of the technical capability they think they’re going to need. They’re scared of making a mistake. They’re scared of saying the wrong thing to the taxpayer. They’re scared that they’re going to work too slowly, miss something, and let everyone down.”

But Morrow and her assistant site coordinators, Sharon Huang and Jeremy Moreau, both of whom are graduate students in the Master of Science in Taxation program, explain what to expect, the kinds of questions to ask clients, what to look for on the returns, where the mistakes might come. One piece of advice Morrow gives her students? Count on your fingers. It’s a familiar and calming way to determine how many years an international student has been here.

Things ramp up fast. The students take three prep classes on resident and nonresident taxation and then must pass three required certification exams. After that, clients start coming in the door.

“I was scared,” confessed Hana Abdelkhalek, MSA ’18, who took the class to get more experience with taxes and tax forms before starting a job this spring at a local accounting firm. “But I ask for assistance whenever I’m hesitating. And it helps that Professor Morrow or one of the assistant site coordinators reviews every return.”

The students get the hang of it very quickly. By the second or third clinic, they’re working assuredly and efficiently, a trend that continues up to the final day.

“The students have to think on their feet,” Morrow said. “They have to deal with problems that they might never have seen before, both technical tax issues and personal issues with the taxpayers. So by the end of the tax season, they really do feel like, ‘OK, I encountered some things I didn’t think I could handle, But, you know? I can handle it.’”

Going through that process firsthand with real people who are actual clients—a typical Suffolk experience—adds value far beyond just being able to fill out a Form 1040NR without making a mistake.

“In a way, completing the tax return almost becomes a byproduct,” said Morrow. “The real takeaway is about developing confidence and self-reliance and the feeling that they can do this. You really do see that evolution over the course of just a few months.”

“When we first started the three weeks of training,” said Abdelkhalek, “I thought, ‘This is not going to happen.’ But after the first client, everything changed. The second time was even easier. I feel that I’m getting more confident and learning a lot with each client. Now I want to do my own tax return and have the class review it for me.”