Internal Revenue Service

New Training Initiatives Needed

The Volunteer Income Tax Assistance (VITA) and Tax Counseling for the Elderly (TCE) program, which is part of the IRS, provides free tax assistance to more than three million low-income taxpayers.

To assist in training its volunteers, the IRS provided three- to five-day classroom training programs for each of the courses. Volunteers were inconvenienced by the time commitment, lack of class availability, and travel required for the training. In addition, course materials had to be updated each year to reflect the new tax laws. This was a time-consuming and costly effort.

The IRS decided to explore the benefits of web-based training (WBT) for its volunteers.

From Paper to Pixels

Kratos Learning & Performance team developed Link & Learn Taxes for the IRS, an 80-hour interactive, web-based training program that includes over 4,000 web pages of tax topics, tax law narratives, examples, case studies, interview simulations, audio, and comprehensive tax exercises.

The course provides access to five distinct training paths through a straightforward,

easy-to-use tabular navigation. All users are required to complete the Basic course. Once the Basic certification has been achieved, volunteers can continue their training path and take the Intermediate, Advanced, Military, and International courses. Additional courses for Puerto Rico and Foreign Students are also provided. Link & Learn Taxes even includes a Returning Student course that covers new tax laws for experienced VITA/TCE volunteers. The courses are also available in Spanish and Chinese.

Quality E-Learning Solutions

The goal of Link & Learn Taxes is to train VITA/TCE volunteers to accurately complete tax returns for the public, as well as obtain certification. The course features:

Comprehensive, easy to understand content
Graphic illustrations to reinforce key concepts and procedures
Real-life case studies with audio dialog
Simple interactive Check Your Knowledge questions about tax topics
Links to tax forms and publications
Glossary
Practice tests designed to measure mastery knowledge of course objectives

Applying Knowledge, Practicing Skills

Topic Activities are included in each lesson to allow volunteers to apply complex concepts and procedures learned in each tax topic. These activities include:

How Would You Respond? - volunteers listen to an interview and choose the best response to a client question
Your Next Client - volunteers answer a series of scenario-based questions regarding tax concepts, calculations, categories, or limits
Focus on Forms - volunteers complete portions of Forms 1040EZ, 1040A, 1040 and other applicable worksheets, schedules, and forms
Tax Your Memory - volunteers match terms with definitions, concepts with examples, or forms with descriptions

Print-Based Guide Completes the Package

After the success of Link & Learn Taxes in training volunteers, the IRS asked Kratos Learning & Performance team to develop print materials to complement the online course. Process-Based Training Student and Instructor Guides provide classroom support to help volunteers learn how to obtain the most accurate information from the taxpayer by integrating good interview techniques with various IRS tools.

Features include:

Main topics presented as questions; for example, "How do I determine which form to use?" teaches volunteers to find information quickly
Instruction on the use of decision trees, tables, and Interview Tips from IRS publications
A continuous scenario of a profiled taxpayer that illustrates the entire tax return preparation process from start to finish, as well as many other real life scenarios
Student exercises to help volunteers check their understanding of the content

We Have Lift-Off!

The Link & Learn Taxes course has been on the IRS website (www.irs.gov) and CD-ROM since 2004, and is accessible to volunteers, as well as the general public. During peak periods, more than 200,000 people have visited Link & Learn Taxes and as many as 9,000,000 pages have been viewed. To date, more than 125,000 volunteers have been certified using the online test.

In 2006, National Taxpayer Advocate, Nina Olson, appeared before Congress to discuss the regulation of tax preparers. Ms. Olson testified about the effectiveness of the Link &; Learn Taxes online training and certification program.

"The IRS itself has already designed a modest but effective version of a testing and certification program — and did so within a one-year timeframe. Link & Learn Taxes is an online training program that allows Volunteer Income Tax Assistance (VITA) volunteers to receive the training and certification necessary to prepare tax returns at VITA sites."

Nina Olson
National Taxpayer Advocate