Chapter 2 General Guidelines for Submissions and Approvals General Specifications for…

Overview If you produce any tax returns and forms using IRS guidelines on permitted changes, you can generate your own substitutes without further approval. If your changes are more extensive, you must get official approval before using substitute forms. These changes include the use of typefaces and sizes other than those found on the official form and the condensing of line item descriptions to save space.

Schedules Schedules are considered to be an integral part of a complete tax return when assigned consecutive page numbers and printed contiguously with page 1 of the return.

Example of Form 706, United States Estate (and Generation-Skipping Transfer) Tax Return, is an example of this Schedules That situation, where Schedules A through S have pages numbered as part of the basic return. For a Form 706 Must Be Submitted to be approved, the entire form including Schedules A through S must be submitted. With the Return

Examples of However, Schedules 1, 2, and 3 of Form 1040A are examples of schedules that can be separately computerSchedules That generated. Although IRS printed as a continuation of Form 1040A, none of these schedules have page numCan Be Submitted bers that require them to be filed with Form 1040A, and may, therefore, be separated from Form 1040A and Separately submitted as computer-generated substitute schedules.

Use and Distribution The Internal Revenue Service is continuing a program to identify and contact tax return preparers, forms of Unapproved developers, and software publishers who use or distribute unapproved forms that do not conform to this Forms revenue procedure. The use of unapproved forms impedes processing of the returns.

1997–50 I.R.B. 15 December 15, 1997