Surgent Income Tax School's Comprehensive Tax Course is a thorough, A to Z guide, providing students with the tools and skills they need to prepare individual tax returns. No prior tax or accounting knowledge is necessary, as this course will teach students how to prepare a tax return from start to finish.

This course is continuously updated with the latest IRS guidance and legislative changes to keep you informed of the latest tax laws. Some of the major topics covered in this course include:

• Filing Requirements - Who must file a tax return and which form must be used?
  
• Types of Income - How are different types of income taxed?
  
• Deductions and Credits - What tax benefits are available to maximize the client's savings?
  
• Responsibilities of Tax Professionals - What duties and responsibilities does a tax preparer owe to his or her clients?

After completing this course, students will have the necessary skill sets and confidence to prepare individual tax returns.

This is a self-study/self paced course within the term limit (6 months).

How fast or slow you move through the program during your program enrollment term is up to you, the time you allot to the program and previous knowledge. All material to complete the course is online.

How the program works:

In our courses, you will read material, print out material, work through learning activities, review questions, quizzes and/or tests offline and plug in your answers online into your learning management system for automated grading. You need to complete each item in the order that it appears. You will need to complete each chapter in the order that it appears as well. This is a self-study/self-paced program.

We teach students how to actually prepare tax returns manually, and we provide expert instructor support by email.

Practical application by preparing actual tax returns results in the tax preparation knowledge being internalized and our quizzes and exams also serve to confirm student learning.

You learn how to prepare returns without using tax preparation software with our comprehensive online tax courses. By preparing practice tax returns manually instead of having tax software do it for you, you will learn the tax laws and be prepared to correctly prepare tax returns. The tax returns that you are preparing are based on real-life scenarios. That enables you to internalize the knowledge and gives you a solid foundation you can continue to build on.

We follow up with quizzes and an exam to make sure that the knowledge is really sinking in. You can download the quizzes and exam beforehand and prepare them of and input your answers online at your own pace when you are confident with your answers.

We teach tax preparation-not tax preparation to one particular software. This way, you can learn the art of tax preparation and apply it critically to different types of software. Remember: Software is only really as good as the operator who is using-if you don't have the knowledge, you won't know if you are asking the right questions.

The best way to learn taxes is to learn what is available now and adjust your new skills and knowledge to tax law changes. The IRS doesn't finalize forms and instructions for the upcoming tax year until late fall, early winter and sometimes even later. It is for this reason that tax courses will always be written based on the prior year's tax law. Tax Law Updates bridge the gap between the material currently being studied and the tax code changes being implemented in the upcoming tax year.

We don't just teach you federal tax law, you also learn how to apply it in your review questions and learning activities by preparing practice tax returns.

Students have access to forms, worksheets and publications that they can access and download within their online course during their enrollment term. As far as videos- there are 30+ total micro video lessons (3-5 minutes in length) total sprinkled within the COMPREHENSIVE program to give additional knowledge on some frequently asked topic questions.

Academic support:

You have access to email instructor support with your program. If you have any academic questions regarding your course- you would reach out to our instructor team from your email address with you name, user ID, the course you are in, the chapter and activity (example- chapter 1 review question) and show any work (if applicable). This will allow the instructor team to coach and guide you on review questions, study questions and learning activities. They cannot give coaching on quizzes and final exams. Instructor support is available M-F (except holidays) and responses usually come in one business day (ex: send an email to the instructor team Monday at 2:24pm- receive a response usually by end of day Tuesday).