Printable IRS Forms

Mention IRS and taxes and what comes to mind? Yes, the inevitable tax forms that one must tackle. For the unwary, the issue of what are and are not printable IRS forms can arise as well.

The IRS was an antiquated dinosaur of an agency for a very long time. It would spend 10,000 man hours hunting down a $100 tax liability, which made little sense. The tax forms it produced were the stuff of legend with entries like “check box here if you are blind” on the 1040 form. The instructions for the forms were so confusing that Albert Einstein remarked that even he couldn’t figure them out.

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Much of this mess changed in the late 1990s when the IRS changed commissioners. Out when the old IRS managers and in came computer executives. They tried to introduce a business approach to the agency. A lot of progress was made, but there are still areas where things are a mess. IRS forms are once such area.

There is something incredibly important you must know if you are looking for printable IRS forms. What is the big secret? Some can be printed off a computer and some cannot. Why is this? You are going to roll your eyes at this one. Certain forms like the 1040 tax form are designed to be scanned by a computer and entered as data into the IRS computers. As such, they can be printed off any computer onto a basic piece of paper and filed with the IRS.

Then there are the stepchild forms.

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These forms were never updated. The classic form is the 1099. A 1099 is an information form. It is used to report tax information to the IRS in certain situations. Let’s say I hired you to build this website and I paid you $1,000. The first thing I would do is…well, demand my money back! At tax time, however, I would have to issue you a 1099-MISC. Ah, but first I would have to find one. Why? The form is still an old carbon document. You know – the ones you have to print hard on so the information shows all the way through. I kid you not.

The 1099 is not the only IRS form like this. Many of them cannot be printed off the computer and used. Instead, you must find a hard copy. You can get them from vendors, the local IRS office [scary place] or libraries on occasion.

How do you know which forms are printable and which are not? Look closely at the form. The IRS has so many problems with people sending in the wrong version that they now mark the forms very clearly. It will say something like “these are not printable IRS forms.”

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