Federal Tax Forms for Current and Previous Years

Find tax forms for current and previous years

A taxpayer searches for tax filing forms on a laptop.
Photo: Jamie Grill / Iconica / Getty Images

Numerous tax forms are needed to prepare your income tax return each year. They're all in the portable document format (PDF) so they require Adobe Acrobat Reader or another program that can display PDFs. You can use Acrobat Reader to view the documents and print them. Most of the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) forms also allow you to type in your information and save a copy with your data to your computer.

The agency's collection at Publications Online provides an exhaustive list of IRS-produced forms and publications. Most of them are available as both PDFs and HTML web pages.

Key Takeaways

  • Numerous schedules are dedicated to reporting various sources of incomes and deductions. Four are numbered and 12 are identified by letter.
  • There are also 13 additional documents identified as "forms" rather than schedules.
  • The most commonly used forms are those that relate to available tax credits, self-employment, and investment income.
  • IRS Publication 17 covers information relevant to most tax situations. It's also available as a downloadable PDF document.


Form 1040 and Form 1040-SR

Taxpayers who are age 65 or older qualify to use the 1040-SR tax form. Younger individuals must use Form 1040.

Both forms come with numerous schedules to provide details about various forms of income and deductions. The majority of them are identified by letter:

Four commonly-used schedules are identified by number:

Note

These schedules are for use for tax year 2022, the tax return you'll file in 2023. The IRS occasionally changes, adds, or deletes schedules to keep up to date with current tax law.

Other Supporting 1040 forms include:

Where To Find Prior Years' Tax Forms

The IRS has an archive of tax forms, instructions, and publications, accessible on the Prior Year Products page on its Web site.

Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs)

Were there two Schedule C forms for businesses in previous years?

Schedule C-EZ was a simplified version of Schedule C that sole proprietors could use through the 2018 tax year, subject to some strict rules, but the IRS retired this form beginning in 2019.

Why is there a form for moving expenses when they're no longer tax deductible?

Certain members of the armed forces are still able to claim a tax deduction for their moving expenses. They must be on active duty and must move because of a permanent change of station due to a military order.

Was this page helpful?
Sources
The Balance uses only high-quality sources, including peer-reviewed studies, to support the facts within our articles. Read our editorial process to learn more about how we fact-check and keep our content accurate, reliable, and trustworthy.
  1. IRS. "Schedules for Form 1040 and Form 1040-SR."

  2. IRS. "About Form 1040, U.S. Individual Income Tax Return."

  3. IRS. "About Schedule C-EZ (Form 1040), Net Profit From Business (Sole Proprietorship)."

  4. IRS. "Moving Expenses to and From the United States."

Related Articles