Building Your First Schedule C Return

Sam arrived at 10 AM on a Thursday.

He had the manila folder from the first visit, but it was fuller now. He’d gone home after the last appointment and found more receipts. He’d pulled up his Cash App and written down every business transaction on a notepad. He’d emailed himself the Facebook ad receipt.

“I thought about what you said,” he told the preparer. “About the records. I did my best.”

She spread everything out on the desk. 1099-NEC from Sunrise Property. The Cash App printout. Fuel receipts from two gas stations. Dump fee receipts from the county transfer station. A receipt for work gloves and contractor bags. The Facebook ad confirmation. His phone bill from December.

“This is a good start,” she said. “Let’s build your return.”

Everything in Module 5 has been leading to this appointment. You’re going to walk through Sam’s complete return from greeting to closing — the intake questions, the income reconstruction, the expense review, the SE tax explanation, and the final numbers. When you finish this lesson, you should feel like you’ve sat next to an experienced preparer and done this yourself.

The appointment starts with a conversation, not the keyboard. The goal of intake is to understand the full scope of the return before you enter a single number. You’re looking for: all income sources, all potential expense categories, any life changes, and any situations that might make this return complicated.

The preparer lays everything out and catalogs what exists before entering anything. This takes about three minutes and prevents missing something important.

Sam’s gross income comes from three sources: the 1099-NEC, Cash App payments, and checks. All three go on Schedule C as gross receipts. The 1099-NEC income is reported to the IRS — it must match. The Cash App and check income is self-reported.