Six Years of a Children’s Hospital Free Tax-Prep Service

In 2024, Nationwide Children’s Hospital and its volunteers completed more than 1,000 tax forms, helped return $1.8 million in refunds to Ohio families and assisted many of those families in accessing tax credits they didn’t know they could receive.

This year, which marks the sixth since Nationwide Children’s and The United Way of Central Ohio’s Tax Time program partnered to office free tax preparation services, is off to an even faster start.

On Feb. 22, 2025 – known as “Super Saturday” at Nationwide Children’s Hospital – volunteers prepared 175 tax returns, which helped filers receive more than $144,000 in refunds. That’s 62 more returns than 2024’s kickoff event for the free tax clinic services, and a record.

Since the Tax Time partnership with Nationwide Children’s began in 2019, volunteers have helped prepare taxes for more than 2,700 families and returned over $5.4 million in refunds.

 “We are proud to partner with United Way each year to help central Ohio families file their taxes for free,” said Nick Jones, vice president of community wellness at Nationwide Children’s. “We’ve found that this service can have an immediate, positive impact on a family’s financial situation. By helping them maximize their refunds, they will have more money to do things like pay for housing, cover child care costs or buy healthy foods to ensure their kids grow into healthy adults.”

Super Saturday marks the beginning of the program, but there are still opportunities for qualifying people in central Ohio to use these free tax services:

• Nationwide Children’s 614FileFree: Appointments are available weekdays at four different locations through April 18. These free services are available for central Ohio residents whose household annual income is below $70,000.

• United Way Tax Time: Appointments can be scheduled at more than 20 locations across Franklin County and surrounding counties, as well as virtually. These free services are available for central Ohio residents whose household annual income is below $64,000.  

Published March 2025