Montana State student volunteers help Alaskan Native communities with tax returns

BOZEMAN – For Montana State University students, Alaskan dogsledding and pro bono accounting are all in a day’s work. Just ask the graduate students who recently returned from sub-zero temperatures in the Arctic Circle to a balmy 10 degrees in Bozeman.

Lily Alexander, Mariah Ketterling and Nicholas Caiazzo, graduate students in the Jake Jabs College of Business and Entrepreneurship, are all working toward their master’s degrees in professional accounting. The trio returned in mid-February from a nine-day trip to Alaska, where they put their knowledge to use by helping individuals in Native communities prepare tax returns.  

Before their trip, the students were already involved with the Volunteer Income Tax Assistance program, or VITA, at MSU. In a class offered in the business college – which they all took as undergraduates – MSU students help individuals who make under $60,000 a year prepare their tax returns.