Faculty Focus: Lance Palmer

A student volunteer came to Lance Palmer with a burning question: How do you tell someone they owed thousands in back taxes?

Palmer, the Janette McGarity Barber Professor in the College of Family and Consumer Sciences, directs the University of Georgia’s Volunteer Income Tax Assistance (VITA) program, a free tax preparation service run by IRS-certified financial planning, accounting, and finance students.

It provides a hands-on service-learning opportunity, allowing students to interact with clients under the guidance of UGA financial planning faculty like Palmer. One lesson he teaches students: Be honest and transparent with clients, even when it seems difficult.

“Oh, thank goodness!” one client said. “I thought it would be so much more!”

The initiative is just one way Palmer is helping people better manage their finances.

Why does financial education matter?

Financial knowledge and being confident in your financial decisions and goals is associated with many positive personal and family outcomes that go beyond dollars and cents. In many situations, people are misinformed about the tax law or misunderstand other financial principles, and this can negatively impact their decision-making process. 

That’s why we launched the Financial Resilience and Education Center. It focuses on creating experiential learning opportunities for UGA students to provide high-impact financial services and education to the community, including high school financial education and literacy.

Why include students in VITA?

Students want to gain experience. Sometimes, they’ve never had a professional job.

It's also a great opportunity for the students to learn how to show empathy to their client, if their expectations were dashed by the changes in the tax law or in their own family situation. You meet clients whose spouses died that year and they’re grieving, but they still have to talk about their income and filing that final joint tax return.

There are a lot of opportunities for growth and experience for students in this program.

This article was written by Sydney Barrilleaux with the UGA Division of Marketing and Communications and originally appeared in the winter 2025 edition of Georgia Magazine.