Income tax preparation is a dynamic and fast-moving field. Each year, the IRS makes a number of adjustments to the tax code, including significant alterations tax professionals must be aware of. It can be difficult to stay current with those changes which impact tax preparers and their clientele.
Universal Accounting’s tax course, the Professional Tax Preparer (PTP) Program, consists of four volumes that cover over 95% of the tax issues a preparer will likely encounter when completing returns. While this course does help students master the tax code, eventually some of the information becomes outdated. Purchasing a new version of the course each year would be too expensive for most students. But the alternative—having a set of manuals that are a year behind—is equally unthinkable.
Universal Accounting has created a reasonable solution. We provide our students with a concise volume of tax updates to supplement the course many purchased in 2011. This year’s edition, 2012 Changes to the Federal Tax Code, will bring the 2011 Professional Tax Preparer Program current, as far as Form 1040 is concerned (corresponding with Modules I and II of the course).
We have made this volume available online or via PDF, which students can print off and keep as a hardcopy reference. The changes are broken down by module, chapter, and part so that it aligns with the PTP course outline. Here we also summarize the new rules that will affect student learning and, more importantly, federal income tax preparation activities in the coming year. If chapters or parts from the student version of the course do not appear in this volume, it is because no meaningful changes were made to those sections for the 2011 tax year.
It is important to note that Universal Accounting refers to the versions of its tax publications, including this one, by the year in which they are published, as do most other reputable publishers. But because the IRS only updates the tax code at the end of the year for which the changes apply, it refers to those changes by their tax year, which is, therefore, a year behind the calendar. Thus, the 2012 Changes to the Federal Tax Code are written in reference to TY2011, the most current year for which tax laws exist.
Universal invites its students to refer to this new resource as they complete their training and/or prepare tax forms for their clients.
If you are interested in enrolling in the Professional Tax Preparer Program, please call Universal at 1-877-833-7909 for more information.
