The Internal Revenue Service has published a newly revised comprehensive tax guide on IRS.gov to help taxpayers get the most out of various tax benefits. However, the IRS is discontinuing its printed wall calendar listing various tax due dates.
Publication 17, Your Federal Income Tax, features details on taking advantage of a wide range of tax-saving opportunities, such as the American Opportunity Tax Credit for parents and college students, and the Child Tax Credit and Earned Income Tax Credit for low- and moderate-income workers. It also includes a rundown on tax changes for 2013 including information on revised tax rates and new limits on various tax benefits for some taxpayers. This useful 292-page guide also provides thousands of interactive links to help taxpayers quickly get answers to their questions.
Publication 17 has been published annually by the IRS since the 1940s and has been available on the IRS web site since 1996. As in prior years, this publication is packed with basic tax-filing information and tips on what income to report and how to report it, figuring capital gains and losses, claiming dependents, choosing the standard deduction versus itemizing deductions, and using IRAs to save for retirement.
Besides Publication 17, IRS.gov offers many other resources for those doing year-end tax planning. Many 2013 forms are already posted, and updated versions of other forms, instructions and publications are being posted almost every day. Forms already available include Form 1040 and short Forms 1040A and1040EZ.
For tax professionals, the IRS also recently released the latest edition of its tax calendars in Publication 509, listing the due dates for various individual and business tax forms. However, according to a reader of Accounting Today, the IRS has discontinued the printed wall calendar that used to list the due dates on the pages of each month.
The IRS noted on the cover of Publication 509 that Publication 1518, IRS Tax Calendar for Small
Businesses and Self-Employed, has been discontinued after 2013. However, the IRS said that an IRS Tax Calendar and most of the information previously contained in Publication 1518 can be found at www.irs.gov/taxcalendar. The calendar dates can be imported into a user's own calendar sofware through the IRS CalendarConnector, and users can also subscribe to the IRS's Small Businesses Calendar through Outlook 2007 or 2010, or Mac iCal.
