SEE Part 1: Enrolled Agent Individuals – 6 Tests
600 questions on filing status, income, deductions, credits, taxation and specialized returns, for 2025 law.
Are you ready to sit Part 1? That is the only question a practice exam has to answer, and a question bank that drills memorizable facts does not answer it.
This practice set is six separate timed exams of 100 questions each, 600 questions in total, built to the IRS content outline for SEE Part 1: Individuals. Every test carries the published domain weighting, so your score report tells you where you stand in Preliminary Work and Taxpayer Data, Income and Assets, Deductions and Credits, Taxation, Advising the Individual Taxpayer and Specialized Returns for Individuals, and not just an overall number.
All of it is written to the law the current window examines: the Internal Revenue Code, forms and publications as amended through 31 December 2025, with every question relating to calendar year 2025. That matters more this year than usual. The One Big Beautiful Bill Act, enacted in July 2025, changed 2025 figures retroactively. The standard deduction is $15,750, $31,500 and $23,625, not the amounts published in late 2024. The state and local tax cap is $40,000, not $10,000. The child tax credit is $2,200 with $1,700 refundable. There are new deductions for qualified tips, qualified overtime, car loan interest and taxpayers aged 65 and over. Older practice material carries the superseded numbers, and a wrong figure is worth nothing however well the question is written.
The six tests rise in difficulty rather than repeating the same test six times. Test 1 is groundwork: short, direct questions on the core rules and figures. Test 2 is application: short scenarios built around the rule pairs candidates confuse. Test 3 is trade-offs, where two answers look right and one condition in the scenario decides. Test 4 is implementation: forms, schedules, thresholds, elections and deadlines. Tests 5 and 6 are two full-length simulations with the longest scenarios, several constraints per question and the domains mixed, each on questions you have not seen before.
Every answer option has its own explanation, so the option you picked tells you what it actually was, not just that it was wrong. Every question also carries an overall explanation with a link to the IRS page behind the rule, because the point is to send you back to the source. Tests 1 to 4 ask for 80% and the two simulations ask for 85%, both above the real exam's bar, because practicing at home is easier than sitting in a test center.
What this is not: a tax course. It will not teach you individual taxation from scratch, and it is designed to work alongside Publication 17 and the free IRS material, not to replace them.
Groundwork: Core Rules and 2025 Figures
100 questions · 165 minutes · pass mark 80%
Start here. One hundred questions on the rules and the dollar figures that everything else in Part 1 is built on: the five filing statuses, the dependency tests, the 2025 standard deduction and filing thresholds, what is and is not taxable income, basis, the main itemized deductions, the family and education credits, self-employment tax, the estimated tax safe harbors, the gift and estate filing rules, and the difference between an FBAR and a Form 8938. Questions are short and direct, one rule or one figure each, so you find out quickly where your knowledge is thin rather than where your reading stamina runs out. Everything is current for tax year 2025, the year this testing window examines, including the figures the One Big Beautiful Bill Act changed retroactively. The pass mark here is 80%, deliberately above the real exam's bar: you are not sitting in a test center, you have no clock pressure worth the name, and a score you can be confident about needs margin.
**
In Practice: Neighboring Rules Compared
100 questions · 160 minutes · pass mark 80%
Short scenarios with a named taxpayer and real numbers, built around the pairs of rules that candidates mix up under pressure. The early distribution exceptions that work for an IRA but not for a qualified plan and the ones that work the other way round. A 60-day rollover against the one-rollover-per-year limit. The American opportunity credit against the lifetime learning credit. The child tax credit against the credit for other dependents. Substantiation at $250, at $500 and at $5,000. A Form 8332 release and what it does not transfer. Gift splitting against a present interest. Income in respect of a decedent against a basis step-up. Each question tells you which fact you missed and, just as usefully, what the option you picked actually was. 160 minutes for 100 questions, 80% to pass.
**
Trade-offs: When Two Answers Look Right
100 questions · 155 minutes · pass mark 80%
The hardest kind of tax question is not the one you have never seen. It is the one where two answers are both defensible and a single fact in the scenario decides which. That is this test. A filing status that turns on the date a spouse moved out. A safe harbor that turns on prior-year adjusted gross income. A deduction that turns on whether the loan originated before or after 31 December 2024. An exclusion that turns on who paid, or on whether an election was filed. The new deductions for tips, overtime, car loan interest and seniors appear here, because their conditions are exactly this kind of test. Read every scenario twice and look for the governing condition before you look at the options. 155 minutes, 80% to pass.
**
Under the Hood: Forms, Thresholds and Elections
100 questions · 145 minutes · pass mark 80%
Implementation detail, which is where a working preparer's knowledge and an exam candidate's reading diverge. Which form, which schedule, which box, which threshold, which election, in what order, by what deadline, with what attached. Form 8606 and basis in a traditional IRA. Schedule 8812 and Form 2441. Form 8867 and the four credits it covers. Form 1116 and the de minimis election. Form 8938 thresholds at home and abroad, and how they differ from the FBAR. Form 2555 and its two tests. Schedule SE, Forms 8959 and 8960, Form 6251, Schedule H. Questions here are shorter than in test 3 because the facts are precise rather than narrative, and the clock is tighter to match. 145 minutes, 80% to pass.
**
Exam Day: Full-Length Simulation
100 questions · 140 minutes · pass mark 85%
A full rehearsal at exam weight, and the first of two. One hundred questions, the longest scenarios of this practice set, several constraints in a single question, the six domains deliberately mixed rather than grouped, and nothing signposted. A dependency fact that changes a credit. A basis fact that changes a deduction. A Schedule 1-A deduction that does not move adjusted gross income, and a medical floor that still uses it. The real exam gives you three and a half hours for 100 questions, of which 15 are unscored experimental items. This test gives you 140 minutes for 100 questions that all count, and asks for 85% rather than the 80% of the earlier tests. Both are deliberate. Sit this one, work through every explanation, then leave a few days before test 6, which is the same weight on different ground. Clear 85 out of 100 inside the time on both and you have real margin for exam day.
**
Exam Day II: A Second Full-Length Simulation
100 questions · 140 minutes · pass mark 85%
The second full-length simulation: the same weight, the same pace and the same 85% bar as test 5, on one hundred questions you have not seen. What differs is the ground it covers. Where test 5 leans on the rules candidates meet first, this one reaches further into the corners of the outline: the ceiling on a business gift, the income test for a passive foreign investment company, Form 8689 and the Virgin Islands, the postponement a combat zone buys you, a client's records in the middle of a fee dispute, the five-year period on a Roth IRA that has never been touched. Sit it cold, in one uninterrupted session, after you have worked through the explanations from test 5. Two clean passes a few days apart is the strongest readiness signal this practice set can give you; one pass and one near miss tells you exactly where the remaining study hours belong.
**
What you will practice
- Sit six full-length, domain-weighted SEE Part 1 practice exams built to the IRS blueprint of 14/17/17/15/11/11 scored questions.
- Apply tax year 2025 individual tax law, including the One Big Beautiful Bill Act changes that took effect retroactively for 2025.
- Tell apart the rule pairs that cost candidates marks: IRA versus plan exceptions, AOTC versus LLC, FBAR versus Form 8938, NIIT versus Additional Medicare Tax.
- Read a scenario for the one condition that decides the answer: filing status, an income threshold, a date, who paid, or whether an election was made.
- See, for every option you did not pick, what that option actually was, and why the keyed answer is right, with a link to the IRS source.
- Work at exam pace and use your per-domain score to decide where the remaining study hours should go.
- Recognize which form, schedule, threshold, election or deadline a fact pattern calls for, rather than only the rule behind it.
- Build to two timed 100-question simulations that run tighter than the real exam, so exam day feels like a release of pressure.
Exam domains covered
Who is this for
Anyone preparing for Part 1 of the IRS Special Enrollment Examination, which is where almost everyone starts and which has the lowest pass rate of the three parts. That means tax preparers moving from seasonal work to year-round practice and representation rights, bookkeepers and accounting staff adding an IRS credential, career changers entering tax from another field, unenrolled preparers who want to represent clients before the IRS, and enrolled agent candidates who have passed Parts 2 or 3 and are working against the three-year clock. It also suits practicing CPAs and attorneys who want a structured refresher on individual taxation, and anyone whose study material was written for the old testing arrangements. The exam itself has not been renamed or replaced, and this practice set does not pretend otherwise, but a great deal changed in 2026: PSI Services took over administration from Prometric on 1 March 2026, the scaled score became 500 on a 200 to 800 scale instead of 105 on a 40 to 130 scale, the fee rose to $317 per part, the window now opens in July rather than May, and the exam runs in three sections with two ten-minute breaks. Material that still quotes a 105 pass mark is out of date. Be clear about what this is: six timed question banks with detailed explanations, current to 31 December 2025 law. It is not a tax course, it does not teach individual taxation from nothing, and it will not make you an enrolled agent on its own.
Requirements
- No formal prerequisites. You do not need a degree, a license or work experience to sit the SEE; you need a PTIN before you apply for enrollment.
- A working knowledge of the Form 1040 and its main schedules. These are practice exams, not a course: they test and explain, and they work alongside the free official material rather than instead of it. Publication 17 and the Form 1040 instructions are the companion reading, and every explanation links back to the relevant IRS page.
- Be ready to study in English. The exam is delivered in English and the questions here use the IRS's own terminology.
Free exam guide
Not sure what to expect? Read how the exam is built, what it covers and how to prepare.