With the advent of the Internet, the Internal Revenue Service (IRS), like most major organizations that employ a lot of paperwork, have been encouraging people to file electronically, using an array of online features. Therefore, assuming you know what you are doing and use the correct forms, there is no harm in filing your taxes using tax forms found online. As is the case with all tax forms, they are free and available for download from the IRS website. However, the IRS uses almost six hundred different forms and not all of them are available electronically. Further, if you have to file for previous years you may need older tax forms that are no longer available online.

Taxpayers should be aware that tax forms frequently change and the tax form that was appropriate for one year may not be appropriate for another year. Therefore, people should be cautious about downloading tax forms from unofficial sources online as these forms may not be current, you will want to speak with a tax advisor like RG Brenner first. However, most IRS forms are available for download directly from the IRS website: www.irs.gov. Beyond the electronic filing options offered by the IRS – e-File and FreeFile – the IRS website also hosts the Free File Fillable Forms (FFFF) program. Unlike the other electronic options available, the FFFF has no restrictions based on income or special conditions, so anyone is allowed to fill out their tax forms online and print out hard copies of them.

The other concern that people choosing to use online tax forms should be on the alert for is making sure that the forms are complete. When downloading forms from unofficial websites, it is entirely possible that the whole form or the line by line form instructions were not reproduced in full. This problem can also be avoided by using the forms and instruction presented directly by the IRS on its website. The only time you may need to download tax forms from other websites is if you are downloading a much older version of a particular form in order to file a correction. In this case, just be sure that the forms you download are both correct and included in full.