The present perfect tense is a perfect tense use to express action that has been completed with respect to the present. (It is considered a present tense, not a past tense, since the resulting state is in the present.) "I have finished" is an example of the present perfect. The Present Perfect is a compound tense; it is formed by using the present tense of "have" ("have" or "has") and the past participle of a verb. In the above example, the past participle "finished" is the main verb, while "have" is the auxiliary verb.