Learn the fundamentals. Work through practice clients. Build a process you can use from the first source document to final review.
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2025 Tax-Year Curriculum2026 filing season
How it works
A clear lesson structure helps you learn. A consistent return workflow helps you put that learning to work.
Your preparation process
Start with the client, the return, and the decision in front of you.
Identify the source documents and facts that control the work.
Enter or review the supported item in the tax software with the full return in view.
Follow the result back to its support before moving forward.
Your learning process
See where the decision fits before the details begin.
Learn the rule, the source facts, and the professional workflow.
Use the process with a new fictional client scenario.
Confirm the decision before continuing through the course.
The curriculum
The curriculum begins with professional preparation and individual-return fundamentals. Later modules add more complex income, state, entity, and estate and trust return work while keeping the same source-to-return process.
See how practice worksProfessional responsibilities, intake, taxpayer setup, filing status, and dependents.
Wages, common income, investments, capital transactions, retirement, and Social Security.
Business and rental activity, adjustments, deductions, family and education credits, Marketplace coverage, and HSAs.
Foreign and multi-state issues, payments and refunds, state returns, entities, and estate and trust return work—with an emphasis on supported preparation, review, and escalation.
A review protocol, seven independent practice returns, and a privately scored final assessment.
Practice clients
Inspect intake facts and source documents, make connected return decisions, save your work, and return to the same case later. Practice stays separate from real taxpayer data.
Practice workspace preview
Connect the file to the returnSource packet
Built around your learning
Every lesson includes the complete written and interactive instruction without requiring a video.
Lesson videos support the instruction, but watching them never gates progress.
Training files and client scenarios are fictional. Real taxpayer data does not belong in the course.
Return to the lesson or practice client where you stopped and keep building from there.
A Certificate of Completion is available only after all 96 lessons are complete and you pass the final assessment. It is not a professional license or government certification.
A few things to know
The full training course is available now. Continuing education is a separate path with separate requirements.
It is designed for people learning individual tax-return preparation from the beginning and for learners who want a structured, end-to-end workflow.
No CE course is currently for sale, and no IRS CE credit is available. This does not affect access to the full tax-preparation training course.
No. It records completion of Valley Tax University's course requirements. It is not a professional license, government certification, or authorization to practice.
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