Find a different Tax-Aide location

The AARP Foundation will announce sites for the 2018 tax season soon. Here’s where to find them.

❚ aarp.org/money/taxes/info-2004/ about_aarp_taxaide.html.

❚ 800-775-6776. table organization’s target of low- and middle-class Americans over age 50, AARP Foundation officials told volunteers by email.

The data is needed to keep grant funding flowing, officials said.

And the AARP Foundation will learn if it is meeting its goal of encouraging seniors to achieve “greater financial resilience,” Tax-Aide regional coordinator Jerry Lopatin wrote to volunteers in September.

In addition, taxpayers will be asked if they want the AARP Foundation to use their personal information to connect them to free services.

For instance, a low-income senior living alone might be interested in signing up for Meals on Wheels. Other issues the foundation plans to tell taxpayers it can help with are housing, income, isolation, volunteer opportunities and jobs.

Volunteers said they’re uncomfortable asking participants to share details of their personal lives.

“The bottom line comes down to: We didn’t sign up to be pollsters for AARP,” said Tax-Aide volunteer Bob Schmidt, 75. “We’re in the business to help the taxpayer. That’s why we signed up for it.”

Schmidt also worries the AARP Foundation could sell taxpayers’ data to corporate partners or advertisers.

In response, Tax-Aide’s national director, Lee-Villanueva, said, “IRS policy prohibits us from using any taxpayer information or data for commercial purposes.”

If taxpayers refuse to share information, they will not be allowed to file online, Tax-Aide officials said.

Filing taxes on old-fashioned paper forms is prone to error, Abel said. And taxpayers often forget to mail them. “We haven’t done paper returns in years,” she said. “It’s not really a viable alternative.”

The AARP Foundation will try to recruit more volunteers and direct taxpayers to other sites in Maricopa County before the tax season begins in early 2019, LeeVillanueva said.

Abel and the volunteers who resigned say they are devastated to leave an organization they believed in.

“It’s horrible. I can’t even picture it yet,” Abel said. “It really hurts to part ways.”