Self-employment tax is a significant and often underestimated cost for farm clients, and it follows rules that diverge from the income tax in ways that catch newer preparers off guard. A payment that is taxable for income tax purposes may carry no self-employment tax cost at all, and the difference often turns on facts specific to agriculture — how land is rented, whether the farmer materially participates, and how a program payment is characterized. This course equips tax professionals new to agricultural clients to recognize those distinctions and handle them correctly on the return, working through the structure of the tax, the computation method available to farmers, and the recurring rental and program-payment questions that drive most self-employment tax decisions on a farm return.