Filing 1040 Sched As this year

The IRS will issue instructions for how to use the existing Schedule A to elect sales tax instead of income tax.

They also will have to issue instructions for other credits/deductions passed and expected to be signed into law momentarily. These inclcude the Educators Deduction and the Tuition & Fees Deduction.

__ Art Kamlet ArtKamlet @ AOL.com Columbus OH K2PZH

I'm sure that the software companies will have a way to do this smoothly. If you file a paper and pencil return, just use a 2005 Schedule A form.

The law hasn't even been signed yet, although I'm sure they'll have a release out shortly after it is. They have already said they're not going to revise the forms.

-- Phil Marti Clarksburg, MD

It's too late to change the forms, so enter sales tax on line 5 of Sch A (where state income tax would normally go) and type the letters ST to the left of it.

I didn't know that the IRS was allowed to use tax forms that don't comply with the current tax law.

-- Vic Roberts Replace xxx with vdr in e-mail address.

They're not - they're just using forms that don't have EXPLICIT spaces for all possible deductions and credits. Deducting your tuition by entering it on a line labeled "Archer MSA deduction" and writing "T" to the left of it (the apparent work-around for the tuition deduction) is no different in concept than entering your uncollected Social Security and Medicare tax on the dotted portion of line 63.

-- Don EA in Upstate NY

Congress passes the substance of the law, it is up the the IRS to come up with the "form" of the law. In other words, as long as the IRS provides a method through instructions or publications to take the deduction using existing forms it's a non-problem.

--

-Ernie-

Look at schedule a for 2005 and there is a line for sales tax. There won't be one on the 2006 form, although it is a legitimate deduction. So it will go under "other taxes" unless IRS says put it on some other line. No law against that. Heck, I've even used a schedule a from a previous year when I ran out of current forms. In olden days you could even get by with a 1040 from previous year by simply marking out the "1976" in heavy black and writing "1977" just above it in letters just as large. ChEAr$, Harlan Lunsford, EA n LA

The law doesn't prescribe forms, and forms, instructions, and publications don't have the force of law on their own. I can think of one thing which Congress mandated: that pie chart about the budget in the instructions. Other possibilities would be the missing children pictures and the instructions on contributing to the public debt, but those could have been Executive Branch initiatives. Basically Congress just hands IRS the law and says, "You figure it out."

-- Phil Marti Clarksburg, MD

Now if Congress & the Prez could get done with politicing, and do THEIR work in a timely fashion, these details could have been worked put -BEFORE- going to press on millions of pounds of paper. Aggravates me to no end, how the business of the Nation id put of as it has been until the last minute or 300+ days into the following fiscal years FIRE all the Bastards. Rant Over, I'll return to my quiet lill corner over here.

-- TaxmanHog -

Don Priebe wrote, in part:

Not necessarily so. According to this article, which ran in many newspapers, IRS is furiously printing new forms to be mailed to paper taxpayers. irs.gov downloadable forms will also be updated.

Sorry, the URLs are not for the article to which I referred.

I think the law also requires the statement about how much time they expect it to take you to fill out the form ("Paperwork Reduction Act" comes to mind as a typical content-contradicting title). Seth