>>Using Adobe Reader et al. to fill out IRS forms. How?
>>
>>A friend says she used to use Adobe Reader (the free version) to fill
>>out her taxes from pdf forms provided by the IRS.
>>
>>She says a few years ago it stopped working. She and I would
>>appreciate any help you can give her on this.
>
>Does it still work with older forms from the IRS, or does it not now >work at all?
I called her for more details. She said her version of Adobe Reader, which was probably earlier than 9 about two years ago was still working for earlier tax years, but didn't work for later years.
>I just grabbed the current 1040 and it's quite fillable. I'm still
>using Adobe Reader 9.
I've very curious, but it's too complicated now to figure out if she made a mistake or if something changed, and if so, what, but I'll tell her it's working now.
>>Now they have a new Adobe Reader X , which Adobe says fills out
>>pdf forms where that is enabled by the author using Adobe Acrobat or
>>one other Adobe Product. It says that on one webpage but on another
>>it includes "or by a similar product".
>>
>>A) Is that some clever way of saying, Adobe Reader won't usually fill
>>out a form, because too many people don't use Adobe products to write >>the forms? >
>It's up to the creator to make a form fillable if he wants. He gets
>to specify which fields can be filled, what fonts they use, etc. He
>also gets to specify whether the filled-out form can be saved or only >printed. >
>>B) Do the free versions of Adobe *reader* 9 and 10 allow one to fill
>>in IRS forms, save them, and print them?
>
>9 does, at least for the latest 1040, because the IRS set the 1040 to >allow that.
Okay. I get that. I was only being suspicious and accusatory to them when I thought they had effectively eliminated a good feature. But even if that was true with some other version, it's back to working now, I see, and that's good enough.
>What about state tax forms?
>
>It's up to the state whether the forms were created with the
>appropriate fill-in permissions.
Sure. I thought maybe someone had heard, or knew about a state or two.
>E) In order to make the IRS forms adobe-reader-fillable, would the
>>government have to buy more than one copy of Adobe Acrobat?
>
>No, one copy will suffice if they have one person who can create forms >fast enough.
If the person could stand the boredom, I would think he could do a form every 3 or 4 minutes, more or less. Maybe one coudl write a macro to do it. :)
I have no idea what sort of deals Adobe and the various government may >have. >
>Seth
Thanks a lot.
And thanks to Remove.