For the many of us who are still paying our fair share while corporations and the 1 percent stand around gawking gleefully (“How droll,” they chuckle as the rest of us squabble over minimum wage), we might need help understanding how much we owe.
If you haven’t started getting your stuff together from last year’s wages, you better get to the IRS site and file for an extension posthaste. The official IRS website still has an open and fairly easy-to-use slate of tax information available. If you have a simple return (one W2, single filing, no extra property, etc.), you may want to just file on your own using the free interface at the same IRS site.
If you need a little free one-on-one help, several organizations have open hours all over the city and suburbs. Tax Prep Chicago, a collaboration between the nonprofits Center for Economic Progress and Ladder Up and the city of Chicago run free walk-in tax help sites at locations all over the city and select suburbs. This initiative can help single taxpayers who earn up to $30,000 annually or families who jointly earn up to $55,000 annually.
In addition, the AARP Foundation offers free tax preparation for the public, and you don’t have to be a certain age or an AARP member to qualify. Go to the AARP site to find locations, days, and times.
A reminder that the concept of War Tax Resistance (in short, refusing to pay some or all tax as a direct-action protest against militarization) is still technically not legal when it comes to federal taxes in this country. As of April 2019, the Religious Freedom Peace Tax Fund Act (aka congressional bill H.R. 1947) has not been ratified, cosponsored, or, honestly, even taken out for lunch. So if you consider yourself a War Tax Resister, officially we’ll have to say you’re on your own. v