Tax season is upon us and many people need help to take advantage of every deduction possible. Many companies like Inuit are hiring people to help them fill the need as well. The need is so big, some companies are providing tax preparer course for free! And since working at home provides some unique tax issues, learning about preparing taxes can be a big help in your own tax prep. Here are some tips to becoming a tax preparer:
1. Find a local or online class. Many franchised tax prep office such as H&R Block, Jackson Hewett, and Liberty Tax (which offers free classes) offer courses in becoming a tax preparer.
2. Obtain a PTIN (Preparer Tax Identification Number) from the IRS.
3. Learn about any special licensing or registration required by your state to perform tax preparation services. The course you take should be able to help you with this, but if not, you need to research it on your own. Contact your state’s occupational department for information.
4. Find work. The company that offers the course may also hire your to work for it, but that’s not always the case. You can search for work-at-home jobs as a tax preparer on sites like CareerBuilder. Or start your own tax preparation service. Check out WAHS’ information on starting a business for tips on how to get up and running.
5. Keep up to date on new tax laws. You may be required to complete continuing education, but even if you aren’t, you’re being hired for your expertise, so you need to stay on top of tax code changes. The IRS has tons of tax information and forms to help you.
If I start to work from hone as a tempted tax preparer. How can do retrieve a link to obtain documents from the clients?
Hi Wanda,
I’m not an expert on this, but for there to be a link to client’s information, they’d have to have it stored in the cloud. Many of the money management services do offer this. The other option is that they can use their financial software to generate reports that have the info. This can be uploaded to the cloud (i.e. Dropbox). It could be emailed, but you’d want to be careful about that since you wouldn’t want the information compromised. Intuit has information about starting a home-based tax service that might help. I hope this helps!