With tax season upon us, there are many cases where you’ll need to use PDFs as you submit your taxes. Whether it’s a 1040, W-4, or W-9, odds are that you’ll be working with PDFs. In this article, we’ll provide some useful tips for working with PDFs, so you can create your own tax forms or fill out other forms.
We’ll also provide links to PDF tax forms, IRS forms, and show you how to turn a PDF into a fillable form.
You will need a different tax form depending on what sort of job you have. For example, a 1040 form is a traditional individual income tax return filed by most US taxpayers. A W-2, on the other hand, is needed for employers to report their employees’ earnings to the IRS.
Heading over to the IRS.Gov forms, you’ll see that most forms are readily available as PDFs. This is because the formatting settings of PDFs are preserved across almost every type of device. The PDF that you see will be formatted the same way for everyone who views it. This makes processing a lot of tax forms at once far easier for the IRS, which might help you receive a faster refund.
That said, IRS’s PDFs require special apps or software to edit. Fortunately, these apps are easy to access — on Apple devices, most editable PDFs work with Preview, and on Windows PCs you can download a free version of Adobe Acrobat Reader. This is by design, as the IRS only wants certain sections of a PDF to be editable. These editable sections are called “fillable fields.” If you download one of these forms and open it, you’ll notice that you’re able to type in certain designated fillable fields. So why is this?
Almost any PDF can be made into a fillable form. In fact, PDF.Live’s online editing tool will automatically detect form fields on a PDF and make them editable. You can also manually place them on a PDF.
Although all tax PDF forms are available at IRS.gov, all of which include already prepared fillable forms that will work on a computer, if you have a PDF that doesn’t include editable form fields, you can create them.
If you need to fill out a special PDF form on your own, or are an employer that needs to create a fillable form from a different PDF, PDF.Live can help.
Our PDF editor can make PDFs into fillable forms. Follow this guide to get started. Remember that PDF.Live allows for a few free tasks every day, but if you need to make a lot of PDFs into fillable forms, you should consider our Unlimited plan that has no limits on daily tasks.
For a blank PDF of IRS Form 1040, your best bet is to get it directly from the IRS.
For a PDF of your tax return, if you use a tax service like TurboTax, your forms will be automatically provided to you in that format. Whether you use TurboTax or another application, you can convert your tax form to a PDF using the Print or Save as functions:
Once you’ve submitted all your tax returns, you’ll accumulate documents with your tax details. It’s best to save these forms for your records. PDF.Live has a couple of tools that can help you out with this:
PDF.Live’s tools don’t require any additional downloads to function. Because PDF.Live is web-based, you can use our tools from any device that has an internet connection. Consider trying out our services today, entirely for free! PDF.Live offers limited daily tasks with no additional cost to you. If you like PDF.Live, consider our low-cost monthly subscription that allows for unlimited usage of our many PDF management tools.
