This set of Excel worksheets is meant to simplify the entry of data and the calculations involved in doing your taxes. The worksheets are in a form acceptable by the IRS so you can print and submit them instead of the forms the IRS sent you.
Take a moment when you finish printing out your final return to look over all of the forms and schedules to see if everything looks reasonable. Some errors are surprisingly easy to spot.
These worksheets will work if you are using Excel version 1.5 or later.
This set of Excel worksheets is shareware. To register, use the "Registration Form" included in this set of worksheets. Send it and your check to:
Richard Williams
2426 Huffman Drive West
Mobile, Alabama 36693-3067
and you will become a registered user. This means that you will receive any updates and will be informed when the forms are ready for next year, which you may order by mail rather than having to download from Genie or Compuserve.
There are two parts to TaxPack. Basic TaxPack includes the 1040, 1099 summaries, and all tax tables and linking worksheets. Supplemental TaxPack includes everything else.
If you order by mail, you will receive a diskette containing both Basic and Supplemental TaxPack. To use the worksheets, create a new folder and copy the contents of both Basic and Supplemental folders into the new folder. If you download from a bulletin board, you have the Basic TaxPack. You may order Supplemental TaxPack and become a registered user by completing the registration form and returning it. The mail order version will be sent to you the next day. The set of forms in the Basic TaxPack is fully operational. However, if you have over $400 of interest or dividend income the 1040 will insist that you have a Schedule B and/or Schedule D. Other than that you can fill out the input forms and print your return to send it the the IRS.
You may distribute all worksheets in the Basic TaxPack folder, but you may not distribute the Supplemental TaxPack.
FORMS _______________________________________________________
Any time you are working with these TaxPack you MUST ALWAYS begin by loading the worksheet The Menu.
• The Menu
Using The Menu you choose which tax form worksheets you will be loading. The full set of worksheets must be loaded at the same time. Since loading MUST be done from The Menu via Command-Option-L and NOT via the File Open menu choice, it is not possible to load a worksheet after the initial load is complete. You should close all worksheets and reload them. (Alternately, you may do another Command-Option-L and click CANCEL each time you are asked if you want to revert to saved worksheet. The danger in using this method is that you will click OK instead of CANCEL which will overwrite changes in that worksheet.)
(Technical Detail:
All forms are linked through the worksheet "_Link". This linking is done dynamically when The Menu loads the forms. I.E. cell values are changed based on the worksheet name you specified on The Menu.)
The following worksheets are always required and are loaded automatically by The Menu.
• _Link
• _Tax
• _Data
• _Macros
The following worksheets are included in Basic TaxPack and are used to enter data from certain 1099 and all W-2 forms that you receive. These should be printed and sent to the IRS with your return. Any or all of these may be selected from The Menu.
• W2
• 1099_DIV
• 1099_INT
• 1099_R
The following worksheets are acceptable facsimiles of IRS forms. You will enter data to these forms just as you would to the normal forms. These forms may be printed and sent to the IRS with your return. Any or all of these may be selected from The Menu.
Basic TaxPack
• 1040_Form
Supplemental TaxPack
• 2441_Form
• 8814_Form_Master
• Schedule_A
• Schedule_B
• Schedule_C_Master
• Schedule_D
• Schedule_E (Page 1 and 2)
• Schedule_SE (Long & Short)
The forms ending in 'Master' may be duplicated when more than one is required. Read on to find out how to load multiple copies.
DIRECTIONS FOR USE ____________________________________________
General Information
Automatic calculation is OFF. Since it takes a while to recalculate a full set of forms it makes sense to enter most of your data then manually recalculate. To recalculate press command-= (command-equal). To set automatic calculation ON, choose Options Calculate... then click "Automatic".
Throughout all of the worksheets, cell values shown in italics indicate that information for that cell is a calculated value and you do not need to make an entry in that cell. Cell values that are in 'normal' font and cells that are empty are cells into which you may enter values. The calculations that are performed use the data supplied by you on the various forms provided as part of the package.
Text in square brackets [ ] are notes to you from me. Occasionally these will appear as the result of some calculation.
You may need to use a form that is not a part of TaxPack If you use one of these forms you may need to modify the formula in a cell to add the value that is coming from the "external" form. As an example look at Schedule SE, line 2. This line requests the sum of the profit from Schedule C, Schedule K-1 and any "other income". The formula for this line uses ONLY the value from your Schedule C. (Since no K-1 is supplied with this package and there is no TaxPack way to enter "other income".) If you use Schedule K-1 or have "other income" then you will need to modify the cell's formula to add these other values.
Most of the cells containing formulas are protected. To unprotect the worksheet choose Option Unprotect Document... .
When quitting a session, Excel will ask if you want to save the changes to each worksheet including the non-user (my) worksheets. You may answer either "yes" or "no" for each worksheet. Unless you have made an error and do not wish to save the changes you should answer "yes" to each dialog box. The non-user worksheets will "reset" themselves the next time they are loaded (as they should) regardless of your answer for those worksheets.
Forms 1099-INT, 1099-DIV, 1099-R, and W-2 Summaries
You must enter information from any 1099's and W-2's you receive on these summaries rather than on your Schedule B, D, 1040 etc. The totals will show up at the correct place on your forms. If you need more lines on these data entry worksheets, just select a line in the middle of the existing list and insert a new line (Command-I) the sum will include these new lines.
In the case of 1099-INT and 1099-DIV only the total will appear on your Schedule B. On each of these worksheets, some column totals refer to a note that states that the totals must be entered manually to other forms where required. This means that the totals are not used in any of the calculations on any of the forms that are furnished. These summary worksheets MUST be sent to the IRS along with your other forms to support the totals that will be shown on your forms and schedules.
W-2
If you have made excess social security tax contributions, a note will appear on the bottom of the W-2. Because of the complexity and number of variables in dealing with excess contributions, the actual calculation to you.
Form 1040
Notice that the Name and Social Security blocks have outlines inside them. Enter the required information in these outline blocks and it will appear on all other forms.
Schedule SE (long & short)
There are several places on these forms where W2 income etc. must be entered for the person with the income. You will need to enter this manually.
Multiple Forms
General
To use multiple forms, copy the form or forms (in finder) and give each one a unique name (like "8814_Chris" or "Schedule_C_Sally"). Each of the copies must have a unique name or you (and I) cannot distinguish between them. You must enter these new names on The Menu so that they will be loaded as part of your set of forms.
Schedule E
You will see two Schedule E’s in the folder, page 1 and page 2. Some of you will only need page 1 or even multiple page 1’s. You will need to file as many pages as are necessary to show your income. You can have one page 2 and up to 5 page 1’s. The totals shown on each page 1 or the page 2 total only THAT page. The sum of all page 1’s and page 2 is shown ONLY on Form 1040.
Schedule C
Form 8814
You may use up to 5 copies of each of these forms.
Schedule SE
You and your spouse may use any combination of two SE long or SE short.
GETTING STARTED ______________________________________________
From Finder, double click "The Menu" worksheet. This is the way you should always begin. On The Menu put an "x" in the box to the left of the forms and schedules you want to use. If you have changed the name of any of the worksheets or if you are using multiple Schedule C's or 8814's as described above, enter the names of these worksheets in the spaces provided. When you have "x"ed all of the forms that you wish to use, press COMMAND-OPTION-L. This will load all of the selected worksheets. The worksheets will appear on the screen in two groups. All of the "internal" worksheets and The Menu will be at the upper right (of a 9" screen) and will "stack" with The Menu on top. The worksheets that are under The Menu are MINE. Do not mess with them (or at least don't change them). These are the tax tables, links and macros that the system uses. All of YOUR worksheets will load beginning at the upper left and waterfall toward the bottom. Once all of the forms loaded, you may double click on the title bar or single click in the zoom box of a worksheet and it will expand to full screen. Clicking again will zoom the worksheet back to original size.
If you mess up the screen and want to position the windows back to their original positions and sizes press COMMAND-OPTION-C.
NEVER load a worksheet without using The Menu and COMMAND-OPTION-L. Some cells are dynamically defined and changed based on what is loaded. If you circumvent this by loading some other way, these changes will not get made and you WILL have errors. If you aren't sure you can always quit and restart from The Menu worksheet and COMMAND-OPTION-L.
PRINTING YOUR RETURN __________________________________________
To print the worksheets that are on the screen (loaded) press COMMAND-OPTION-P. This will print the worksheets using the proper size font and magnification so that everything fits on a page correctly. The pages are already set up for this. The worksheets are printed using 9 and 18 point Geneva. This was tested only on an ImageWriter II. A font file containing Geneva 18 is included in the Supplemental TaxPack in case you do not have this size.
You can use the COMMAND-OPTION-P to preview all of the worksheets to be printed by marking the Page Preview box in any print dialog then cancelling that preview and pressing COMMAND-OPTION-P. This process of previewing all of your worksheets can be interrupted by pressing Command-. (Command Period). Of course you can preview the active worksheet by using the Print Page Preview feature.
If you are going to print to some other device and wish to use the COMMAND-OPTION-P, you may need to make some changes. As you receive them, each worksheet has a name defined called documentFont (use Command-L to examine or change names) which is defined as either 9 or 18. If documentFont is 18 then the form must be printed at 50% reduction (see the Page Setup dialog) while a documentFont of 9 is printed at 100%. For some reason sheets that won't fit on an ImageWriter page when the font size is 9 will fit when printed at 50% in font size 18. By changing this font size and using the Page Setup... dialog for each worksheet you should be able to get all of the worksheets to print using the COMMAND-OPTION-P.
I depend on you to report errors. It is virtually impossible for me to verify every possible combination of entries. I will correct errors as they are reported and upload them to Genie and Compuserve. This will be a letter detailing the changes rather than a new worksheet. Registered users will receive a letter detailing any corrections.
I will mail out any corrections to registered users so that they will get them before April 1st. This gives you time to make corrections and still file on time. I advise you to wait to file so that you will receive any corrections. This is not a problem for folks that owe the IRS since you are probably waiting until the 15th anyway, but for those receiving refunds you have to decide how important this is to you. Let me qualify all this by saying that so far most errors found affect a small minority of taxpayers. (And the IRS does not get upset about small errors in your return. They will just send you a nice letter.)
If you need help, you may contact me on either service. Genie: RLWilliams, Compuserve: 71001,3201 I dial into Genie once a week and Compuserve less often, so don't wait until the last minute to try to contact me. Of course you may write me at the above address as well. If you are a registered user, you can call me 7-9 p.m. CST.
