This past fall, I saw that AARP was looking for volunteers to become certified tax aides through the IRS’ Tax Counselors for the Elderly (TCE) program that it participates in. That program, the lesser-known but amiable cousin of the Volunteer Income Tax Assistance (VITA) program, provides free tax help for taxpayers, especially folks 60 or older who need assistance with the intricacies of pensions and other retirement-related issues. 

Long story short, I’m one of those odd people who actually enjoy doing their own taxes using H&R Block software, so I raised my hand and recently finished 3½ days of hands-on-laptop training at AARP’s Des Moines office. 

I’m pretty sure I was the only nonretired person in the group of about 20 of us in the training class, which every TCE volunteer is required to attend prior to each tax season — regardless of how long they’ve prepared taxes. To give you an idea of how long some of these folks have been at it, one of the volunteers told me she has been a tax aide since 1989. 

“Joe’s headed off to tax camp again,” my colleague Perry Beeman observed as I trekked from the newsroom a third consecutive day. It became sort of a daily pilgrimage away from the familiar landscape of deadlines, bylines and cutlines to an IRS-induced alternative reality of deductions, instructions, exemptions and forms. And I learned that the IRS has a form for every conceivable situation, along with some practice tax return scenarios that had more twists than a John Grisham novel. 

Before I could start volunteering later this month in south Des Moines, I had to pass an advanced certification test with at least an 80 percent score. (You get two chances, which is good, because I missed too many questions on the first try and had to retake it.) It was probably the most challenging “open-book” test I’ve taken since business school classes at Stetson University. 

Seriously, I think it’s going to be a rewarding experience —  it’s already been a lot of fun meeting some of the dedicated people who are crazy-smart about the ins and outs of preparing taxes, and it looks like a pretty nice way to give back to the community.