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welcome and thank you for standing by. atthis time all participants are in a listen-only mode. during the question and answer sessionyou may press star then 1 from your touchtone telephone. today's conference is being recorded, if youhave any objections you may disconnect at this time. now, i'd like to turn the conferenceover to mr. dan rutherford, sir you may begin. thank you, tony. hello and welcome to ourfinancial education webinar series for library staff. i'm dan rutherford. and i'm dave sieminski. and we're with the consumer financial protectionbureau offices of financial education and

financial empowerment. today's webinar ispart of an ongoing educational series to help library staff build knowledge and become morecomfortable helping patrons. today's webinar will focus on saving at taxtime. this will be an interactive webinar with plenty of time for questions and answers.we will open up the phone lines when we are ready to hold discussions and take questions. when speaking please be courteous to othersand keep your questions and comments on point and brief so we can include as many peopleas possible. also provide your name and affiliation so we know who we're talking to and whereyou're from. we are recording this webinar so your questionsand comments will be recorded too. it generally

takes us a few weeks for us to review andpost these recordings, so we ask that you please be patient. we will post the video in the library resourcessection of our web site. the web address is on the screen. on that page you'll also seeour list of upcoming webinar topics. we plan to hold these webinars on a monthlybasis and the format should be fairly consistent with today's presentation. so if you haven'talready done so please send your contact information to financial education at cfph.gov and askto be added to our email list. if you add your library, if you add librarywebinars or something similar to the subject line, we'll make sure to include you in futureupdates and announcements.

this is the fifth in our webinar series. lastmonth we talked about dealing with debt and debt reduction. we are going to take the monthof december off due to the holidays and pick up again in the new year with understandingcredit reports and scores. again we want to make this as interactiveas possible, so we will stop and have discussions and take questions along the way. but youcan also ask questions using the q&a window on your screen. simply click the q&a button and type in yourquestion, then click ask. the question will appear on our screens and we will respondeither on the spot or during the q&a sessions. but before we get started here is this month’sproject update. and this month i really wanted

to highlight the tremendous growth that we'reseeing in the program, so here are some of our top line stats. so far we've signed up or 336 libraries havesaid that they were interested in participating in the project. and, you know, when we startedback in july of this year, we really only had nine libraries who are participating inour pilot efforts and helping us develop the program. so to go from 9 to 336 we think is a reallytremendous victory and we really owe it all, all to those of you who are interested inproviding more financial education in your libraries.

of those 336 libraries that represents i guessa total branch network of 1,574 branches. so we really are getting some good penetrationand that also is spread across 47 states. so, you know, in a very short order we'vepretty much gone coast-to-coast. another important number that i'd like to talk about is thefact that since we launched the web site in july we've delivered more than 330,000 publications. and those are bulk ordered and delivered forfree directly to your library. if you're interested and you haven't ordered from us yet you cando so using that link, promotions.usa.gov/cfphlibraries.html. and to see everything that we're offeringour electronic resources, free publications, marketing materials and more you can visitconsumerfinance.gov/libraryresources.

so thank you to all of those who have signedup and are offering more financial education in your libraries or offering financial educationfor the first time. and with that i'll turn it over to dave to talk about saving at taxtime. thanks dan, i'm particularly pleased to behere talking to folks associated with libraries today. because libraries have a long historyin helping people prepare their taxes. as far back as i can remember libraries havealways been a place where you could go pick up your paper, paper tax forms and get information,basic information about taxes. and then of course as libraries evolved andstarted incorporating computer centers and there was more and more online tax preparationsoftware available, people would come into

libraries and still do come into librariesto prepare their taxes. and of course libraries also have been long-time,for a long time have been associated with the aarp. and many libraries host aarp taxsites that, you know, help older people prepare their taxes and often times community members. and then finally probably over the past tenyears they've become more closely associated with community vita campaigns, where communityvolunteers would come in and prepare taxes for a lot of folks in the community. for example in seattle where i came from,we partnered with our local library there in 2005 i believe we started. and every year,year-on-year we prepare the tax preparation

campaign in seattle prepares over 4000 taxreturns at their local library. so a little bit about why the cfph is engagedwith tax time savings. it actually says in our enabling legislation that we have a mandateto encourage wealth building and financial services during the preparation process toclaim the earned income tax credit and federal benefits. and so we've interpreted that as being reallypresent and active in helping people save during the, during tax time. and for thoseof you who may not be familiar with the earned income tax credit or eitc it's a benefit forworking people who have low to moderate incomes. for example people can get the eitc up toabout $52,000 in income per year although

the largest eitc benefits typically go tofamilies with children that have incomes between and $20,000. and the eitc refunds can be several thousanddollars for some of those families that are eligible for the highest credits. also it'sa refundable tax credit, which means that it is added onto any other refund that youmight already be eligible for. and in the case of people that actually owetaxes it can reduce the amount of taxes you owe. a little bit of tax time basics and thesenumbers are from 2012 tax year so the year before last. about 131 million people fill returns everyyear in this country, 84 million of those

are people with - are households with incomesless than $50,000 a year. of those 26.2 million receive the earned income tax credit and there'sa variety of reasons why that, the difference is so much. mostly it has to do with filing status andthe fact that as people, especially people with smaller families or single filers, theyactually, their income raises above the level where they'd actually be eligible. eighty-two million people use direct deposit,meaning that they file their return electronically and they get direct deposit right into theirbank account and about 3.2 million returns are filed using volunteer income tax assistanceprograms and i'll say more about that in a

few minutes. of all those people only 1.5% split and savea portion of their refund that we can track and less than 1% purchase savings bonds, whichis something you can do right through the tax return. so there's a lot of research in this spaceabout the barriers to saving at tax time even though we think it's a great idea and a lotof people really want to save. and some of them are that taxpayers have already in manycases especially lower income tax filers that don't, that are living on the financial edgehave already sort of pre-spent their refund before they even have it.

that means that they may be planning to getthat refund in order to (unintelligible) expenses that they've accrued over the year or maybemajor purchases that they've been waiting to make until they get their tax refund. so when they get to the tax, when they getready to file their tax return they've already sort of earmarked all those funds. also taxvolunteers or staff at tax companies like h&r block and others are not having the conversationwith those taxpayers about saving. and oftentimes if people aren't asked andaren't aware that they can save at tax time and how easy it is then they may not followthrough. other logistical challenges are that taxpayers sometimes they come to the tax site,they want to save but they don't have their

account information. and if they don't have their account informationto fill into the tax form then they're less likely to save. also some people don't havea bank account or any other savings vehicle so there's no place for them to save. and then finally there are at least some peoplewho are, especially benefit recipients, probably benefit recipients who are worried that ifthey save to much that it will affect their eligibility for their benefits. so why is savings, saving at tax time importantfor people with, especially with people with lower incomes. it could be important for everybodybut especially for people with lower incomes.

first of all, in many cases especially peoplethat are getting the earned income tax credit and an additional refund, this may be thesingle biggest check that they receive all year, it's bigger than any single paycheckthat they have. so it's a moment in time when they have an opportunity to make a savingsdecision. second, building savings can insulate families,especially families that don't have a lot of other resources against economic shocksthat happen throughout the year. there's a lot of research that's been donethat shows that even 500 or $1000 having that in the bank as a reserve in case your carbreaks down or you lose a couple days pay can really help to offset the kinds of shocksthat could occur if you literally are out

of money when something like that happens. and then finally savings, saving while you'refiling your return can be really easy and automatic. there's a variety of ways thati'll talk about in a few minutes that you can actually save while you're filing yourtax return. so at cfpb some of the things we talk aboutare, you know, first of all it's important regardless of what happens that people makethe most of their tax refund and they can do that in a couple of ways. first of all, if you're - if people are confidentin filing their own returns and preparing them, they can go online. they can go to anyone of the major tax companies like h&r block

or jackson hewitt or they can go right tothe irs to the link that you see on your screen. and they can find online tax preparation softwarethat they can use and file their return for free if their income is less than $58,000a year. so it's a free resource. second, if they're not confident in filingreturns and a lot of people are not, the majority of people even lower income filers still goto paid preparers to get their returns done. but if they're not confident in filing theirreturns they can also get their returns done for free by going to the web site you seeagain on your screen. and the irs has a locator page where you can put in your zip code andit will direct you to the local free tax sites in your community.

and third, it's important for people to makesure that they when they're filing a return either themselves or having somebody helpthem that they're claiming all the tax credits for which they're eligible. certainly the eitc is one but there are otherslike the child tax credit and sometimes energy credits and others that they want to makesure that they take advantage of if they're eligible. and there's a link on your screen to see abouthow you find out whether you are eitc eligible. so some other ways that you can make sureto make the most of your refund is to use direct deposit for a speedier refund.

if you use direct deposit when you're filingyour return you're likely to get your refund deposited into your account in 10 to 15 days.otherwise if you're filing a return and mailing it in paper it might take four to six weeks.so there's really a difference and for a lot of families that times makes a lot of difference. and then of course there's options to savea portion of your refund as i said through the return itself. you can use direct depositinto savings, you can split your refund in up to three separate accounts through a formcalled 8888, which not everybody knows the form number if you're using tax preparationsoftware it doesn't matter it directs you right to that form.

and then of course you can right through thetax form you can also buy savings bonds and a lot of people like to do that because theypay a little bit of interest and they provide a little bit of long-term savings that theycan oftentimes save not only for themselves but for their family. one of the things that we like to remind folksabout and i'm sure many of you have seen these kinds of checklists before. the irs has themand others provide them, but it's making sure that when folks come to get their tax or goingto get their taxes done either at a paid preparer or hopefully at a volunteer site that theybring all the necessary information. some of it is pretty obvious, their photoid, their social security numbers, or (itin),

their tax id numbers for all their familymembers. all the various tax forms, bringing last years tax - state and federal tax returnsis always helpful. it's not mandatory but it's really, really helpful for the tax preparer. and then this year something to make surethat you're telling folks about is to make sure that they bring their tax related documentssuch as their 1095 a, b or c, which is the form that people are now starting, going tostart receiving this year if they signed up for healthcare through one of the healthcareexchanges. so that's something to be aware of because it's a brand new form. and then of course it's important for themto bring all their banking account information.

so if they have an account and they can bringa voided check or savings account number or deposit slip then it makes it easier for whoeveris assisting them to make a direct deposit into their account. and then finally if they're filing, if folksare filing jointly with their spouse they need to make sure that both people come towherever they're going to get help for their tax preparation because both people have tosign the return. so a little bit about eit or excuse me, cfpb'swork in promoting saving at tax time. and we call our campaign to promote saving attax time ready, set, save. so the purpose of ready, set, save is to provideopportunities for low income and economically

vulnerable taxpayers to save a portion oftheir tax refund, which we think will help them increase their financial stability andalso their financial capability. and what we're trying to achieve is firstof all, you know, through our ready, set, save campaign is to increase the capabilityof non-profits and businesses that are offering savings opportunities and tax preparationopportunities to their tax customers to empower them to be better ready to help their taxcustomer save. also or, you know, one of our goals is tomake sure that the taxpayers are aware of all the saving options that they have. ourgoal is to try to increase the rate in amount of savings at tax time by consumers that arereceiving a refund. and then of course we

want to increase awareness about the cfpbas a resource for consumers to take control of their financial lives. so we've actually been doing ready, set, savefor three years now. basically since the cfpb started and we started very small becauseit was the first year and then the first couple years we ran small pilots with a few communitiesto test different ways of promoting savings at tax time. and then last year in 2014 we actually fieldeda 13 city tax time savings pilot. we developed training manuals for volunteer tax preparersand staff to help them with savings promotion because it's a little bit difficult to engagepeople around saving because primarily the

folks are there to get their returns doneand prepared. and of course whether they are tax volunteersor even tax pros at some of the commercial tax sites, they're very focused on makingsure the returns are prepared accurately. and so adding an additional, adding a pieceof conversation around saving is something that you actually need to help people to do.how do you start that conversation, how do you actually ask people if they're interestedin saving while they're getting their returns prepared. so for this pilot we developed those trainingmanuals and the information and we also did some webinars for some of those volunteers.we provided training to 52 trainers that in

turn trained approximately 1800 volunteers. we developed a lot of information for thepilot sites, consumer information that they could, you know, posters they could hang upat their sites that promoted savings, a variety of other collateral materials that were, youknow, of use to them. we also produced a couple of short videospromoting various ways to save at tax time that tax campaign sites were able to showin their site if they had a tv or a computer to show them on that sort of helped to reinforcethe message. so what we learned last year were a couplethings. so here are the numbers, we actually - the - where we provided the training tothose pilot sites, about 48,000 taxpayers

had their returns prepared where the trainingwas used. and about 39,000 of those taxpayers receiveda refund. and the numbers that we're really interested in is how many people actuallysaved. and you can see the numbers, you know, 1127 split their refunds and put a portionof their savings, put a portion of their refund into savings and that's 3.1% of the total. and then just under 2% bought u.s. savingsbonds and those numbers may seem kind of low but actually those numbers are about twicethe national average for people that are saving their refund at tax time. so it can tell youthat there's at least a little bit of a nudge that occurred in our pilot last year.

next slide please, some of the other thingsthat we learned, which are actually even more interesting than the raw numbers is whichof those sites of the 13 pilot sites were most effective and what were their characteristics. and what we learned is that consumers aremore likely to follow through and save if they're engaged multiple times. it's likeanything else where you if you haven't been thinking about and planning for something,it takes a couple of times of being reminded that something is possible before you're likelyto make the decision to follow through. so a little bit they have to be sold on theconcept. and by selling i don't mean hard sell but just reminded. savings is a possibility,it has some benefits, here is easy ways you

can save and we're here to help you followthrough. and then some of the really successful siteshad actually dedicated saving staff that would engage tax customers, you know, either beforethey went to start having their return prepared and even afterwards because as i said beforethe tax professionals or the tax volunteers are really focused on preparing the returns. so building that into their, to the conversationthey had with tax customers sometimes can be, sometimes can be an additional challengethat they can't follow through in all the time. also we found that incentives, there werevarious tax campaigns we worked with where

they provided very small incentives to encouragepeople to save like $20 gift cards and things like that. and where those incentives were provided,people were more likely to save and if they saved they didn't save just the minimum amount,sometimes they'd save several hundred dollars. so just a little bit of an incentive sometimescan have a lot of benefit. and then providing information and prompts in advance may increasesavings activity. so if people are reminded before they come to the tax site that savingis a possibility and making sure they bring all their information that sometimes helps. and that's a really important point david,especially since a lot of the libraries out

there are probably vita locations themselvesor, you know, offer tax time savings opportunities. so what sorts of information should they beputting out now to get people thinking about savings at tax time come january? so we're going to have some information andi'll talk about this a little more at the end. but we'll actually have some things likechecklists and little budget worksheets that you could put out in advance of tax season. and we'll have them available sometime inearly december and we'll make sure that we let all of you know that those are available.and you can actually put them out on your shelves in advance of tax season.

and those will be prompts that you could usethat people can walk away with that will be reminders. and then you can use them as tools,as talking tools yourself if you want to talk to your library customers about the possibilityof saving. okay. great. and then finally one of the last things ithink we learned from the pilot year was that especially in, within tax sites where peopleare actually getting help with their tax preparations, sometimes celebrating successes helps. people like to know when they've done somethingthat's good, good for themselves and they like to share that information with others.so we actually had some of our tax campaign

sites that actually had posters and they'dring a bell if somebody saved, doing little things like that, that really sort of celebratethe fact that people have followed through and saved. so we tried to learn from each successiveyear about what was effective in promoting saving at tax time. and so what we're goingto do this year is we're going to expand the availability of our volunteer training andtools so that they're widely available across all the volunteer income tax assistance campaignsacross the country. and we'll be communicating with that entirenetwork to let them know it's available. we'll broadly publicize through all the networksand social media the fact that we're providing

these trainings and this informational materialso more tax volunteers are prepared to have that savings conversation with their tax customers. we'll make all our materials available fordownload via the cfpb web site and that includes the informational sheets that i referred topreviously that you can actually put out on your shelf prior to tax season. we'll provide several training webinars thatwill be available to all, any of you are welcome as well but, you know, we're focusing primarilyon volunteer income tax assistance sites that are actually going to be helping people withreturns, that may include some of you. and then we'll record those webinars so thatthey're available for people that couldn't

attend at the time that we offered them. andthen we'll be doing a variety of other promotional options to prepare to inform consumers aboutways that they can make the most of their refund. and finally a couple things that aren't onthis slide that i want to mention, we will be doing a small pilot working probably withjust a few sites, maybe a half a dozen to ten sites around the country. where we're partnering with americorps volunteerswho are going to stationed at those sites and will be testing the idea of having a coupleof those volunteers trained as saving specialists to follow through on what we learned fromlast year.

that if you have dedicated staff in the taxsite that aren't tax preparers that can engage with customers during the preparation or priorto the preparation of the return then it might help them with following through and saving. some of the tools that we have available,the one on your left that says start a better tomorrow today and it looks like a checklist,i know you can't read it from here but essentially that's a little planning checklist. it will be one of the items that you'll beable to put out on your shelves early that will get people thinking about the thingsthat they want to save for. we also have another little budget sheet, i don't have a pictureof it here but it's a budget where they can

actually make decisions. i want to save for a certain goal and theycan fill in whatever the goal is and they can - it has a little budgetary checklistwhere they can say i want to set amount aside for housing and other necessities and thenit leaves them an option to where they want to save or with the - for the purpose theywant to save. we also have things like posters that youcan put up at the libraries, you can put them up at certainly at any vita sites, that'swhat they're primarily intended for. the third piece you see there is our instructorsguide, which will be really, it will be a single guide this year, which will be a bookletthat any volunteer or instructor can use that

will give them some tips and tricks aboutencouraging saving at tax time. and then finally the last piece you see tothe far right is indicative of all of our materials, which will be produced in spanishas well. so we'll have them available in both english and spanish. so finally if you have any questions certainlyyou can contact me here but i think we're going to have some question and answer rightnow for anybody that wants to ask questions right at this moment. yes tony, why don't you go ahead and see ifwe have any questions on the line or if folks are ready to have a question or two now isyour opportunity.

absolutely, we'll now begin the question andanswer portion. if you would like to ask a question just press star then 1 from yourtouchtone telephone. remember to make sure your phone is un-muted and record your nameclearly when prompted. one moment for our first question, our firstquestion comes from linda caruso, your line is open. i'm sorry, i pressed that by mistake. i apologize. no problem. again, if you'd like to ask aquestion just press star then 1 from your touchtone telephone. well dave...

and the first question - i'm sorry. ...go ahead. our first question comes from michelle gordonyour line is open. thank you, i was just wondering how soon arethe new materials going to be available for us to request? materials, right now we're shooting for allof our materials to be available the first week of december. we will send out a - we'llsend out a notice and i'm sure we can send it to the entire library's network as soonas they're available or even to give you a heads up.

and it will have links to where you can godownload them or order them off our procurement site. at that time when we, by the way atthat time when we send out the notice about the materials being available, we'll alsobe sending out a blast email that will let people know about the - when our webinar trainingswill be scheduled, so you can sign up for those as well. and again if you'd like to ask a questionjust press star then 1 from your touchtone while we're waiting dave why - or could youtell us a little bit about, you know, a lot of the libraries are probably looking aheadto december, january when they can - what types of programs they should be thinkingabout in terms of financial education.

would something about, you know, finding thesealternative places to do your taxes i think most people naturally would go to the taxpreparers they see on tv or advertised in the newspaper but may not necessarily knowa lot about the aarp opportunities available to them or the vita opportunities that areavailable in their communities. so can you talk a little bit about that? sure, in many communities around the countrylarge and small there are community vita campaigns, there are aarp tax assistance centers. andi strongly encourage you to if you're not already connected to those campaigns in yourown community then there was one link to the irs web page that i showed earlier in thepresentation, which would be an easy way to

find out where sites are located. but i would also encourage you to for examplereach out to your local united way or to other community based organizations that might beengaged in tax preparation because i know if the library is not already connected tothose campaigns that they'd be thrilled to have you as a partner and to help do outreachand to promote materials. and as you see on the site if you - the secondbullet where it says get pre-help filing your return. if you click on that bullet it actuallyshows a list of tax sites by zip code. and so from that if you're not familiar withyour local tax campaign you can click there and put in your own zip code and then findout where the local tax campaign site is and

then you can talk to them directly. our next question comes from arlene weibelyour line is open. hi, you kind of partially answered this withthe last question but i was just trying to understand a little bit more about the typesof organizations that are in the vita program, in that network. are they mostly charitable organizations orwhat are the, what is the variety of the different kinds of groups that are in that particularprogram? well it differs in different communities althoughi would say a large majority of them are non-profit organizations and they may be a social serviceagency that's - i think in each community

it sort of starts organically if you willand some community based organization takes the lead. sometimes it's united way but sometimes it'sother community based organizations and then they tend to build coalitions of other organizationsthat want to be either directly participatory and have a tax site in their building or theyjust want to be able to refer people to the tax sites that exist. there are some case, in some cases there areactually municipally organized campaigns. so in other words city government or in afew cases county governments that have taking the lead and organized.

and as a matter of fact if you have specificquestions and you can't easily find the information on the irs web site, you're welcome to contactme because i do have a list of most of the community based organizations around the countrythat organize vita campaigns. okay thank you. but for the libraries benefit to i know theirs has put some effort into providing the free online applications that allow peopleto file their own taxes. and libraries have - are a great resource in their communitiesfor free internet access and for free terminals that patrons can use. so can you describe a little bit about how,what the irs is doing in that sort of directed

preparation space? well so there is the - they have a - irs hasa couple different programs. one i referred to early on, which is the top bullet on your,on the screen right now where you can go onto the irs web site and if you have income, peoplehave incomes under 58,000 they can go to anyone of the links on that site that they'll see. and it actually is inclusive of all the majortax preparation software providers, intuit, turbo tax, h&r block, jackson hewitt and others.and you can choose anyone of them and you can self-file for free with an income below58,000. the irs is also piloting a - and i think it'sonly in select communities sort of an assisted

self-prep model where people can submit theirinformation and then actually get some referral assistance that won't be in person, but idon't think that's nationally available i think there's only, it's only being pilotedin select communities. tony, do we have any more questions? i'm showing no further questions in queuebut if you'd like to ask a question just press star then 1 from your touchtone telephone.and i'm showing no questions. all right if there are no further questionsthen we can wrap things up. dave's contact information was there on the previous slide,there it is. so if you want to reach out to him if you have any more questions on thistopic.

also you can email us if you want to get moreinformation about our libraries campaign project or want or have suggestions. like i've saidthis in the past, this is an ongoing dialogue and we're always welcome to suggestions oryour program ideas and best practices that we can share with other libraries and withthat we will say thank you and sign off for now. thank you. thank you for your participation in today'scall you may now disconnect. we'll ask that the speaker stand by for post conference.