The handy, dandy, Package X, the SearsCatalog of tax publications has finally gone to be with Elvis this year. After 2004, the IRS will no longer print copies of Package X. The simple reason here is the changes in technology which have rendered it a 21st century buggy whip. Your options follow:
1. Download each individual form you need from the IRS website or the related state websites
2. Subscribe to a forms service through someone like BNA or Superforms.
3. Get the forms through your tax software, and figure something out for those forms which you can’t figure out how to use, or for those items when you need just one form, and for which you don’t want to pay the “per return” charge for that client.
Another option is a hybrid of this, and IMHO, is the optimal solution for many sole practitioners like me:
1. Federal: Use Publication 1796, a little known CD available from the IRS for about $25. As the IRS describes it,
Publication 1796, IRS Tax Products (a CD-ROM equivalent to PKG X), is
sold by both the Superintendent of Documents under the Government
Printing Office (GPO) and the National Technical Information System
(NTIS) under the US Department of Commerce.
2. States: Use the State Tax Links site provided by the Federation of Tax Administrators.