The EA exam questions everyone gets wrong on eadojo
I pulled the stats from eadojo's question bank this week. 1,329 attempts across 663 unique questions, 15 active days of practice, 68.8% overall accuracy. That's about right for people grinding through SEE material for the first time.
But some questions are eating people alive. Here's the actual data.
The 25% club
One question has been attempted 4 times. One person got it right.
The question: Which travel costs fall within the federal tax definition of business travel expenses?
The options:
- A) Only personal vacation costs
- B) Only costs reimbursed under a nonaccountable plan
- C) Ordinary and necessary costs of traveling away from home for a business, profession, or job
- D) All commuting costs without restriction
The correct answer is C. Three out of four people picked something else.
This is a Part 2 question from the Business Tax Preparation section. The trap is overthinking it. candidates see "ordinary and necessary" and second-guess themselves because it sounds too broad. It's not. That's literally the definition.
The partnership minefield
Two Part 2 Business Entities questions are sitting at 33.3% accuracy.
First one: What threshold rule governs whether a partnership may elect out of the centralized partnership audit regime for a tax year?
A partnership can elect out if it's an eligible partnership for that tax year. That's it. People get tangled in the CPA-style answers about gross income and public trading status, but the actual test wants you to know: eligibility determines everything.
Second one: Andrew and Camille are married, file separately, own a restaurant together, share profits and losses equally, and it's not an LLC. They want to make a Qualified Joint Venture election. How is their business classified?
The answer is: a partnership. If spouses carry on a business together and share profits and losses, they're partners. whether or not they have a formal partnership agreement. The Qualified Joint Venture election doesn't change the classification. It just lets them avoid filing a partnership return.
This is the kind of question that punishes people who memorized rules without understanding the underlying structure.
The corporate stock transfer that isn't taxable
Alder transfers property for corporate stock and controls the corporation immediately afterward. What's the result?
D. the exchange is not taxable. If you transfer property to a corporation in exchange for stock and you control the corporation immediately after, Section 351 applies. No gain or loss recognized. People guess "wage income" or "gift tax" because they're pattern-matching to things they've seen before, but Section 351 exchanges are nonrecognition events.
What the pattern says
The hardest questions all share one thing: they don't look like the flashcards. The answer is usually the most technically precise option that's also the shortest. Not the one with the most qualifiers. Not the one that sounds the most like a textbook.
Part 2 is where this pattern hits hardest. More on that in the next post.
If you're practicing on eadojo and see these question IDs pop up. you've been warned.
Related: