It's tax season. For us non-financially minded folks (me), that's probably the least fun season of the year. That is why I married an accountant. Love you, Dear!
But filing your taxes is not an overly complicated, technical process, so why does it appear so daunting to parents and families?
Time.
Free time is scarce for parents of children under 18. Often, it occurs at the end of the day (after 8 p.m.) when children are asleep. How much energy do we have at this point? And who wants to spend their precious 30 minutes of free time prepping their taxes?
Tax stress for young families
This lack of time leads to increased anxiety around tax season. According to a 2024 survey by Nextdoor, 64% of US adults admitted that tax season introduced stress in their lives. It takes time (which we don't have) and effort (which we give to other things).
This process can be particularly difficult for young families, who must devote considerable attention to their children throughout the day and before and after work. This lack of time coincides with a growing need for family child care and enrichment programs as children become school-age.
After school programs: make this easy for your families
As an after school program, your team is responsible for providing parents with a seamless digital tax statement process. This process will not only save them time but also help them unlock essential tax credits, such as the Child and Dependent Care Credit (CDCC), to offset the cost of care, courses, and camps.
A seamless tax statement process built into our platform
Arux provides multiple paths for families attending your programming to easily access their tax statements: one with your help and one they can access independently.
In addition to generating tax statements for your community members within Arux's Admin Portal, families and community members can download their tax statements from the Recent Payment Activity section of their Account Dashboard on the Community Portal.
If families paid for child care, preschool, early childhood family education, and courses (new!) during the previous year, Arux will automatically generate tax statements for each program they enrolled in. These statements are easily accessible and downloadable from every parent's account dashboard. They are available after January 1, with no added work for you.
It's a painless process, right?
Listen, I don't know if the stress or pain around tax season will ever disappear. It's a task we all have to do on top of our really, really busy lives, and it can be an intimidating one. That's a complex problem to solve for.
However, what after school programs can do is make their part as easy as possible. This means timely (early) and digitally accessible statements for all programming your families attend. If your program wants to optimize this process for families, we would love to share more about how Arux can expand your capabilities around accessible tax statements.