Tax Preparer, Individual Income Tax (Form 1040), TY2025 (EA/CPA)

What you'll do

You prepare full federal individual returns from scratch under TY2025 rules, doing the worksheets, phase-outs, limitations and carryovers by hand. Each figure needs a preparer note showing how you reached it, because someone else has to be able to reproduce the number.

You also write self-contained tax scenarios with the facts, dates, filing status and expected result spelled out. These cover the harder returns: self-employment, partnership and S-corporation K-1s, investments and credits. Then you check AI-generated returns and computations, rating each error as critical, secondary or minor, and record any ambiguity or conflict you find in the law or IRS guidance.

Who qualifies

• An active EA or CPA credential, and you currently prepare individual returns
• 3+ tax seasons on complex returns (Schedule C, K-1s, investments, credits), not mainly W-2 work
• Fluency in TY2025 rules
• The ability to compute a full return by hand and explain each number in writing

The three levels

• Contributor: meets the requirements above.
• Expert: 5+ tax seasons, able to audit a scenario and make it harder without making it vague. A trainer, reviewer or QC background is preferred.
• Adjudicator: 10+ years with review or sign-off responsibility, resolving disputed outcomes. An IRS exam, representation or QC partner background is preferred.

Preferred specialties are foreign tax credit and K-1 reporting, Schedule C with Section 179 and the QBI deduction, investments and capital gains, and energy and education credits.

What it pays

The listing pays $50 to $75 an hour. It does not say whether the level decides where you land in that range, so ask before you accept.

Worth knowing

Good:

• 30 openings, a large intake for a credentialed role
• Clear levels, so senior preparers are not grading next to beginners
• Written for preparers, and no AI experience is needed

Less good:

• US only, and an active EA or CPA credential is mandatory
• Doing a full return by hand is slow compared with working in tax software
• The ad gives no weekly hours or end date

About this listing

Read on micro1's referral board on 5 November 2026, the day it was posted. See micro1.

How to get hired

• micro1 screens through an AI interview with Zara. Our guide to what Zara asks covers the format.
• Open your CV with the credential and the number of seasons on complex returns, then name the forms you handle most: Schedule C, K-1s, Form 1116 if you do foreign tax credit work.
• Have one awkward return ready to describe out loud, including the phase-out or carryover that made it hard.
• Rework a QBI or capital loss carryover calculation by hand this week, without software, so the worksheet is fresh for the scenario tasks.