The Income Tax School offers a variety of courses and packages to tailor to the needs of anyone who wants to learn to be a tax preparer. Deciding on a package depends on the career path you would like to take. Do you hope to become an EA or do you just want to prepare returns for the general public during tax season? Because we offer such a diverse selection of courses, we decided to make a second blog post of frequently asked questions to help direct potential students looking for a little guidance in their career path.
Comprehensive Career Package vs. Business Career Package – which should I choose?
The Career Package is for someone to learn tax preparation and work as an employee of a tax firm. The Business Package is for someone who wants to learn tax preparation and start their own sole-proprietor tax business. The Business Package includes a guide to operate a tax office and a marketing handbook with strategies and tactics to obtain new clients. The optional Business Package Guides are an extra $100. Below are links to the package descriptions.
Comprehensive Tax Course with Career Package
I want to expand my knowledge to do corporate and partnership returns. What courses should I take?
You can learn to prepare basic corporation and partnership returns by taking our Small Business-I course. More advanced topics are covered in our Small Business-II course.
I earned my CPA license from Liberty and want to start my own tax business. Do I need to take your courses?
Even though you’ve worked for Liberty, you may want to take our Comprehensive Income Tax Course unless you’ve prepared many more complex individual returns. Especially since you are a CPA, you might also want to take our Small Business-I course to learn to prepare corporation and partnership returns. You could also consider enrolling in our Chartered Tax Professional certificate program to earn the CTP® professional designation and be prepared to become an Enrolled Agent.
What is CTP®?
The Chartered Tax Professional (CTP®) professional designation is awarded by Surgent Income Tax School to a tax professional who has completed the 180-hour CTP certificate program with an average grade of at least 80% and has documented at least 500 hours of tax preparation experience. The Income Tax School is certified by the State Council of Higher Education for Virginia (SCHEV) as a private career school. The only professional designation currently recognized by the IRS is the Enrolled Agent (EA), which is awarded by the IRS to tax professionals who have passed the EA exam. The CTP provides education in all of the topics covered on the IRS EA Exam. Components of the CTP program meet CE requirements for EAs and CPAs. Tax professionals who have earned the CTP designation should be well prepared to complete an EA Exam review and then pass the IRS EA Exam.
I live in California, do you offer the CTEC Course?
Yes. Our Comprehensive Tax Course has a California Edition. Just select the California Edition when adding the course to your cart. You can access our LMS with an Internet connection anytime, anywhere 24/7. Through our e-learning system, you can study at your own pace with instructor support provided through e-mail. There are reading assignments, but the entire student text is online. You can also purchase a hard copy of the text for convenience and future reference. You would prepare practice tax returns manually off-line and enter the results online. All quizzes and tax return problems are automatically graded and you receive instructional feedback for wrong answers. There is also a final exam. After successfully completing the course, you would receive a certificate of completion and CTEC would be notified.