<p>I am a freshman in college studying Accounting. I am in the honors accounting program and from my last quarter classes currently have a 4.0. This is my first accounting internship or internship period, and I am currently a tax accountant at a tax firm. My first full work day I was given a project to do a payroll and tax forms for employers. I’ve never done any tax papers before or have any experience working on them in class being only a freshman and taking only introductory accounting classes.
All the other interns are upperclassman who have taken tax classes and I suppose have some epxerience, so they are probably not as bad off as I am. I feel dumb continuously asking my mentor about what I am supposed to be doing, and it’s taking me forever to complete any project.
They knkow I am a freshman and have not taken any tax classes, but I still was not walked through any of these tax forms. I’m not sure if I am expected to know how to do these or if it’s normal for me to feel this way. I hate the feeling of not knowing what I’m doing at work, but I hate not knowing what I’m doing at work or continuously asking or feeling dumb.</p>
<p>Why don’t you just google what you don’t know? Seriously. Those tax forms (tax laws) must be very well documented on the internet. A lot of seasoned programmers google whenever they don’t know something.</p>
<p>Tax forms come with instructions for a reason. Read the instructions. Payroll tax forms are designed to be filled out by laypeople. You read the instructions through once, then start at the top of the form, filling in the blanks as you go, and referring either to the comments next to each line or to the forms instructions to know what goes on any particular blank.</p>
<p>Also, pull last year’s file (or last quarter’s file, if it’s a 941). Look at the workpapers, and see how the person before you did it.</p>
<p>It’s normal for the first time to take you forever. It’s normal to give it to someone else for review and them send it back with a bunch of things to be fixed. But it’s not typical at all for someone to walk you through the entirety of the form itself - the form is pretty self-explanatory. </p>
<p>(I strongly discourage you from Google, though, other than to find the form and instructions. Particularly a Google search looking for relevant laws. Forms aren’t codified, and there’s going to be no plain English explanation that’s more accurate than the instructions themselves. Google is good for many things, and even some tax-related things, but there are a lot of dangerously wrong statements about tax-related things on the internet. Your firm has tax research software for a reason.)</p>
<p>I know instruction sheets are provided,and they’re most likely not as bad as I’m making them out to be. I guess I’m just really overwhelmed with everything I am needed to do. It’s my first time at an office job, and I just feel really inexperienced with all of this work and making me stress out =</p>
<p>It is normal and understandable. I work with a lot of interns and new grads. We don’t expect them to know what to do right away. We encouraged them to ask questions when they don’t know what to do . What we’ll do sometimes is to assign a buddy (mentor) to an intern. If your company doesn’t do that, try to find a friendly person who you could go to with questions. What I would encourage you to do is to put in extra hours to “catch up” with what you don’t know. If nothing else, it will give you few brownie points. </p>
<p>Don’t be too hard on yourself.</p>