Tax Topic 253 – Substitute Tax Forms

The Service provides guidance for the approval and acceptance of computer–prepared and computer-generated tax forms that are filed by individual taxpayers and tax practitioners.

If you want to produce your own version of a tax form, you should first obtain a copy of IRS Publication 1167 (PDF), General Rules and Specifications for Substitute Forms and Schedules. This document describes the general requirements for designing and submitting all such forms for approval and is updated annually to coincide with the current tax year. This publication cross-references other similar, related publications that are available for certain specialized substitute forms that differ from normal form size, that require multi-part paper stock, or that have other similarly unique features (such as Forms W-2, and 1099). Publication 1167 also provides actual examples and layouts of some of the most used IRS forms

Publication 1167 (PDF) can be downloaded from www.irs.gov or can be found in the Internal Revenue Bulletin No. 2007-49, under Revenue Procedure 2007-68.