Rough draft for: The Challenge, page 2.

            While working through each lesson I realized that preparing a tax return is much the same as putting together a puzzle, as my mom would say, “inch by inch is a cinch, yard by yard is very hard”!  Step by step, I started understanding the concepts of basic tax law and completing a 1040 tax return.  I learned that to start a tax return first I had to gather the personal information such as: name, address, single, married, dependents and what line that information goes on and why.  Next were types of income: was it wages, retirement, self employment, foreign income.  Plus with the types of income I had to learn what and where the income goes on the tax return and what other forms may have to accompany the tax return.  Finally, finding out if and what kind of credits can go with the tax return.  Is there a child credit, a school credit, a business credit, plus many others.  There are many details in a tax return that has to have detailed research before it can be sent off to the Internal Revenue Service.  If you are doing your own tax return a great resource that is free is The Publication 17.  You can get it free either by ordering it, at the local tax office, or the IRS web site. 

                Not only was I learning tax law and how to prepare a tax return, there was the challenge of learning a new computer program that the tax return was going into.  The students got to pick a study buddy and when it was computer time we had to share the computer.  I am a grandmother, with limited computer knowledge (the most I ever did was type emails or search on line for something), I chose to  watch my study buddy and learn the program before taking my turn.  Between my study buddy and me we were able to get through the program and put the tax information where it belonged.  The hard thing about that was each line or section of the tax return would go into separate pages in the program, looking totally different than on the 1040 tax form,  which was very confusing.