My Story, or How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love Taxes

My purpose for doing taxes has always been to help people. From volunteering at a community center to becoming an IRS enrolled agent and starting my own practice, I’ve always been guided by the principle that knowledge is power; the more people understand and feel comfortable with their taxes, the more they will be able to take charge of their finances. Taxes can be very stressful for a number of reasons. My easy-going approach combined with my deep knowledge of tax regulations and experience as a teacher makes me excellently positioned for helping people to charge their financial story. 

My Sophomore year of college, I signed up for a course on taxes--far afield from my study of Mathematics and Arabic. As part of the final exam of the course, we were required to pass the basic level of the IRS Volunteer Income Tax Assistance Program, and volunteer at a local site. I fell in love with volunteering to do people taxes, and volunteered whenever I could at the site, including over the following two years at college, and for some time after graduating. VITA is a great program, and if you haven’t heard of it, I would very much recommend looking into it either as a volunteer or for yourself.

VITA has a bunch of levels of certifications, and each year I accumulated more and more, until there were none more left. At some point, my mom asked me if I was planning on starting a tax business. After five seasons volunteering, the idea of starting my own business had never occurred to me. After a few weeks of mulling over the idea, I decided to pursue it.

From start to finish, it took me about a year to start Taxes For Beginners. The business model went through a bunch of iterations, but I decided to build on what I already knew how to do: help people who wanted to learn more about their taxes. The biggest part of the journey was being an IRS Enrolled Agent. Just before COVID quarantine and lockdowns started, I signed up for a review course. The certification process consists of taking three, three-hour long exams on various tax and IRS-related topics, and passing a background check. I started my review course in March of 2020, passed the last of the exams in August, and heard from the IRS that my background check had cleared and that I had been granted enrolled status in October.  

It’s been a great journey so far, and I look forward to what lies in the road ahead!