Similar to the free income tax return service in Iroquois Falls that My Cochrane Now Dot Com told you about yesterday, there’s also one in Cochrane.  It’s through the Ininew Friendship Centre, and is for anyone in town who meets the criteria.

Friendship Centre family support worker Brandi Pollari has been offering the service for four years now.

If you want to take advantage of it, Pollari says your first stop is the centre. “I have forms at the receptionist with a check list on what they need: their T4, their old age, CPP, little questionnaire on the back to make sure they have their landlord’s name and stuff like that.”

Once you have all the forms, you drop them back off and Pollari calls when your return is done.

She averages about a hundred returns a year.  That’s a lot of work.

“It is, but because they’re all low income, old age, CPP, they’re really simplified because there’s not much to put in. So it takes 20 minutes, half hour to do each one.”

Pollari says she started the service because in July, some of her clients would say they didn’t get a GST or child tax credit, because they couldn’t afford to pay to file income tax.  Consequently, some would need help buying necessities like diapers.