The Real Story Behind Tax Forms from The Internal Revenue Service (IRS) Kansas City, Missouri, U.S.A. April 15, 2002 All federal tax forms created at the IRS Headquarters in Washington D.C. are originally composed on MECCA III Integrated Electronic Publishing Systems from Amgraf, Inc. That is a very significant statement, as the IRS provides thousands of forms, plus supporting instruction booklets, CD-ROMs, web pages and more. Many of the supporting documents also use MECCA III files for the graphics contained in the document. Karen Gill, Chief, Composition and Forms Design Unit at the IRS, summarizes her operation this way: " IRS started using Mecca III in 1990 to compose all of the tax forms and their instructions. We use Mecca III's graphic capabilities to create the forms and any graphics that will go in instructional materials. Until 1996 we were using Mecca III's batch composition capabilities to compose the instruction booklets. After 1996, most of the instructions were converted to SGML composition using Arbortext. We are still creating graphics that get dropped in the SGML products using Mecca III software. In 1991, IRS started working with Adobe Inc. to create PDFs of the tax products composed with Mecca III. The files were placed on a Bulletin Board System (BBS) and in 1993 they were made available on a CD-ROM. IRS started posting these PDFs to our web page in 1995 and to a fax back service in 1996. Also in 1996, we started making fillable versions of the PDF files. Currently we are sending all of our camera copy to printers as PDFs. Mecca III continues to be used to create the source PostScript files for all of the PDFs of tax forms for these various distribution outlets. In the future, we are planning to convert from Mecca III to Amgraf's OneForm Designer Plus. We plan on using OneForm's ability to create fillable fields to generate the fillable PDFs of tax forms from the source files. There was a 40% increase in electronic filing of tax returns from home computers last year, which is drastically changing the way I do my job! As electronic filing increases, the forms need to change to meet these electronic needs." The BBS was started in 1991 as a service to printers and tax practitioners. The web page, www.irs.gov, was an outgrowth of the BBS. It has logged well over a half a billion hits. Information available on the web site includes: All current IRS tax forms, notices, and publications Prior year tax forms Draft versions of tax forms Tax help information Legislative news Fillable forms How to contact IRS The CD-ROM is sold through National Technical Information Services and the Superintendent of Documents. The original PDF (created from a MECCA III file) is used to build the CD-ROM. About 90% of the forms are fillable, using a specialized version of Adobe Acrobat created for the IRS. It also includes prior year tax forms. Everything the IRS does is on a large scale. Given our country's complex tax laws, the range and complexity of forms and their attendant instructions is enormous. There are over 1,000 tax products, including forms, separate instructions, and taxpayer information publications. The IRS is up to the task and is constantly looking for better, more efficient, more user friendly and more cost effective ways to serve their mandate. Amgraf software continues to play an important role. Karen L. Gill has 24 years service with the IRS. For the last 18 years she has been involved in tax form composition. Karen is currently Chief of the Composition and Forms Unit, Tax Products Branch, Multimedia Publishing Division. Karen holds a degree in Business Management from the University of Maryland and is active in the Amgraf User Group. Karen can be contacted at 202-622-8379. About Amgraf, Inc. Amgraf, Inc., founded in 1976, is a privately held Kansas City based software company dedicated to adding value to the business forms industry through automated solutions for the production and utilization of forms, labels, and security documents. Amgraf's software products are for both traditional paper-based forms production as well as the latest e-business applications. All Amgraf software packages are based on open architectures, standard platforms, and offer a high degree of programmability to meet the most demanding production requirements.