Tax Preparer

Career Area: Finance

Occupation Group: Accounting Support

Salary

Percentile wages tell how much a certain percentage of an overall population in a geographic area or within a given industry or field makes. The percentile wage estimate is the value of a wage below which a certain percent of workers fall.

An example would be the 25th percentile, 25 percent of workers employed in that occupation earn less and 75 percent earn more than the estimated wage value. At the 75th percentile, 75 percent of workers employed in that occupation earn less and 25 percent earn more than the estimated wage value.

A typical Tax Preparer earns the following wages (national and state):

State

The average salary in North Carolina for those pursuing this career is $42,823

National

The average salary in the United States for those pursuing this career is $48,375

What Does a Professional in this Career Do?

Prepares tax returns for individuals or small businesses, with certification as required by the Internal Revenue Service. Provides knowledge and experience with tax law, accounting and software.

Employment Trends

The job demand and job growth statistics shown here were derived from job posts over the past year. Expected job growth projections are extrapolated from year-over-year job post listing history.

Job demand and job growth is expected at the following rates:

Skills

A professional in this position typically utilizes the following skills in the course of everyday work in this exciting and challenging field:

Baseline Skills

The following are baseline skills every Tax Preparer is expected to have in order to experience success in this field:

• Communication Skills: The ability to convey information to another effectively and efficiently.
• Bilingual: Fluency of two different languages.
• Computer Literacy: The ability to use computers and related technology efficiently for work tasks.
• Research: Experience performing creative and systematic work to understand a product, market, or customer, either before building a new solution, or to troubleshoot an existing issue
• Spanish: Spanish (; espaol ), also called Castilian (, castellano ), is a Romance language that originated in the Castile region of Spain and today has hundreds of millions of native speakers around the world.

Specialized Skills

These skills are specific to working in this career:

• Tax Preparation: Working experience preparing tax returns, often income tax returns, often for a person other than the taxpayer.
• Tax Returns: Working experience with reports filed by a revenue service or tax collection agency containing information used to calculate income tax or other taxes.
• Customer Service: Working experience with the provision of service to customers before, during and after a purchase.
• Tax Law: Tax law is an area of legal study dealing with the constitutional, common-law, statutory, tax treaty, and regulatory rules that constitute the law applicable to taxation.
• Customer Contact: Experience working with business processes and technologies that are designed to engage customers and facilitate communication by a variety of channels.

Distinguishing Skills

Any Tax Preparer that possesses the following skills will stand out against the competition:

• Individual Tax Returns: The type of tax return filed by an individual. Both single and married taxpayers, with and without dependents, file this type of return.
• Tax Services Industry Knowledge: Working experience of Tax Services Industry KnowledgeFirms in the Tax Services industry prepare personal and business income tax returns and offer tax advisory services and non-legal representation before tax authorities.

Experience

This position typically requires the following level of experience. The numbers presented in the pie charts below were derived from actual job posts over the past year. Not all job postings list experience requirements.

Common Job Titles

It is possible to find work in this field in positions commonly listed as the following job titles:

• Tax Preparer
• Tax Professional & Preparer Or Credentialed Tax Expert Seasonal Remote
• First Tax Professional
• Tax Professional
• Seasonal Tax Preparer

Similar Occupations

If you are interested in exploring similar occupations, you may want to research the following job titles:

• Tax Specialist
• Tax Accountant