Since my STEP project was a property tax internship, the main activities were collecting valuation evidence of commercial properties, presenting evidence to the county, forecasting client budgets, and tax research. Tax is a cyclical industry, so my June was very busy with valuations, while my July was focused on budgets and tax research.

While completing my STEP project, my understanding of a career in tax completely changed. I was not heavily calculating taxes, but rather looking for if a property was overvalued. If I could prove a said property was overvalued, I could save a client in taxes. This process was much more creative and opinion-based than I expected. Therefore, I found that I liked working with tax more than I thought I would and a career in tax could lead to different paths such as becoming a tax lawyer.

The biggest event that led to my transformation of appreciating the world of tax was my team’s trust in me to work on big projects. I was able to complete property valuation reviews by myself and learn from hands on experience. I was also able to attend an informal hearing where a few of my coworkers and I presented our valuations to the county. This hands on experience was critical to my understanding of tax.

Additionally, the relationships with my coworkers allowed for a space of learning. Each one of my coworkers was an amazing teacher and would always encourage me to ask questions. I think these relationships also allowed me to ask questions beyond my internship, but also career questions. I appreciated their willingness to share their career experiences, which helped me to further see the different sides of a career in tax.

Lastly, the tax research that I conducted helped me to develop a want and goal of going to law school. I loved researching different tax laws within different states. Specifically, I was tasked with researching whether or not a certain interpretation of a statute in Michigan was applicable in Ohio. I found this to be challenging, yet interesting.

Ultimately, this change of my views on tax has been significant to my goals. I am now more confident on where I want to be post graduation with law school being a professional goal that I would love to achieve 5 or 6 years after being in public accounting. I am still unsure of exactly what path in public accounting I want to go down, but I am excited to have a long term career goal to work towards.

Here is a photo of the whole intern class at Ryan LLC and a team photo of us volunteering together: