Blog

Displaying: November 2013

Comprehensive Course Completed

I finished the comprehensive course and based on my first post it took me about 14 weeks. As is the case for all of us, sometimes life got in the way, but overall I feel like I kept a decent pace and most weeks was able to finish 2 chapters. When life wasn’t in the […]

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7 Ways to Gain Visibility Over the Holiday Season

  It’s officially the holiday season.  While most people are planning parties, vacations, and focused on getting their holiday shopping done, tax professionals are preparing for tax season.  Just because people seem to be focused on the holidays doesn’t mean all is lost for marketing your tax services.  There are some great guerilla marketing techniques […]

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How to Get Your Tax Business Off the Ground Before Tax Season

If you’re thinking about getting your tax business off the ground before tax season, you may have time to make it just under the wire.  With a good base of tax knowledge and some great resources to help you, you can be up and running your own tax business in no time.   We get a […]

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Spending Time to Save Time

I can almost say that without exception, every time I rushed through the reading in a chapter and attempted quizzes, learning activities, or review questions, I ran into problems.  It also seemed to be, without exception, that these problems could have been easily prevented had I slowed down and read with purpose instead just to […]

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A Newfound Comfort in Filling out Returns by Hand

When I first started dealing with all of the tax return problems in this course by hand, I really, really missed software. It’s nice to answer a few questions, do a little data entry and just watch completed forms pop out of the other end. However, I never really thought too much about how much […]

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Updates and Corrections: Don’t Leave Home Without Them

While I’ve been mostly happy with my approach of doing my work offline a couple chapters at a time and then entering them online at a later time, there have been a few mishaps on my part.  The most important one being not checking the updates and corrections provided on the course website before answering […]

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How to Study for the Enrolled Agents Exam

Becoming an Enrolled Agent is essential if you want to advance your career as a tax preparer.  IRS Enrolled Agents are unrestricted as to which taxpayers they can represent, the types of tax matters they can handle, and which IRS offices they can represent clients before.  One of the requirements of becoming an Enrolled Agent […]

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Tax Preparation is Best Learned from Experience

Throughout this course, one of the things that I’ve really appreciated is the way the questions and answers are handled for all the learning activities. Since for many of us, this is a self-study course, it’s always nice to be given an opportunity to find mistakes on our own. The way the answers are laid […]

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Avoiding Shortcuts

I’ve been transferring all the work I’ve done offline to the online quizzes and learning activities and have found that the process is a bit slow.  Outside of actually getting everything entered, perfection is an actual possibility on most of the activities since you are given two chances and the highest score is kept.  As […]

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Why Your Tax Firm Should Be Hiring and Training Now

  As you prepare for the upcoming tax season, you should also begin hiring and training the staff you will need to run your business in the upcoming year. Ideally, running a tax school during the off-season is the best way to find the right employees. By running an income tax school, you can observe […]

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