Jim Houghton spent almost four decades as an engineer at Combustion Engineering and Alstom Power. Now, the 76-year-old Chattanooga-area resident is doing his best to help folks navigate tax season.
Houghton is a site coordinator for the Volunteer Income Tax Assistance Program sponsored by the Urban League of Greater Chattanooga. The program offers free help preparing income tax returns to individuals and families who make less than $54,000 a year, people with disabilities, and those with limited English-speaking skills.
And like many of the volunteers in the annual program that helps thousands of area residents claim millions of dollars in refunds, Houghton’s previous accounting experience was not that much more expansive than balancing his checkbook.
“Fifteen years ago, a close friend that was volunteering at the Northside Neighborhood House told me they had heard about an income tax program for low-income people that the Urban League was sponsoring, and the Neighborhood House was looking for someone to do taxes for their clients,” he said. “I had been retired a couple of years and was kind of looking for something to do to give back to my community. So I volunteered.”
Now he’s regularly spending multiple hours several days a week helping those in the VITA program, which is nationally sponsored by the Internal Revenue Service. The local VITA program, hosted by the Urban League under the leadership of Val Palmer, makes sure volunteers like Houghton are given a four-day training course to cover details and the line items to support people filling out their returns.