Panicking about tax day? Start here.
April 15th, the deadline to submit your taxes is literally around the corner. When juggling our families, jobs (or job search), meal planning and other obligations it’s really easy to postpone taking care of complicated tasks like preparing your taxes. Even the idea can be stressful. We’ve all been there. The bad news is we all definitely need to do our taxes. The good news is we don’t have to do it alone: there are several programs in the Bay Area that will help you one-on-one and for free. There is still time, let’s get your tax preparation out of the way already! Start by using One Degree to find the tax preparation resources that are closest to you:
1. Go to www.1deg.org and log in to your One Degree account (or create one if you don’t have one already):
2. Type the zip code around where you would like to find tax help:
2. Type the zip code around where you would like to find tax help:
3. Type “Tax preparation” in the search box in the search box in the upper left corner (you can replace the wording to find any other type of resource you may need, beyond taxes):
4. Browse the different options around you and follow the “What to do next” instructions to schedule an appointment:
There are many organizations like the San Francisco Community Empowerment Center, SparkPoint, Arriba Juntos and The Women’s Building and Lao Family Community Development that will sit down with you and help you get it all sorted out. The best way to find one near you is to search by your zip code — as per the instructions above. Just in case, we also put together a list of opportunities by location:
San Francisco:
- Mission (Help in Spanish, Cantonese and Mandarin available too)
- Chinatown (Help in Cantonese & Mandarin available too)
- Tenderloin
- Tenderloin (Help in Vietnamese available too)
- SOMA (Help in Tagalog available too)
- Bayview (Help in Cantonese & Mandarin available too)
- Richmond
- Visitacion Valley
Alameda County:
- Oakland
- East Oakland / Fruitvale (Help available in 21 languages)
- Fruitvale (Help in Spanish available too)
- East Oakland
- San Leandro
- Freemont
(The options above are just samples, you may find more locations and language options in each area or options in other cities by browsing One Degree)
If you can’t find a viable option for you or need help navigating our site, don’t hesitate to reach out to us via our live chat tool (at the bottom right of your screen when in 1deg.org). While we can’t help you do your taxes ourselves, we will try our best to find someone who can.
Please let us know how it goes by leaving a review (at the bottom of each opportunity on One Degree) for the organizations you interact with. It is immensely helpful for everyone to hear about our community’s experience with each program. Also, if you leave a review from now until April 15th, we will mail you a free One Degree tote bag!
Good luck! As always, we’re rooting for you!
