Main Street Practitioner Blog

Treasury Secretary Mnuchin announced the department will unveil a new Form 1040, U.S. Individual Income Tax Return, next week that will come in the shape of a postcard  “as promised.”

In the lead-up to the passage of the 2017 tax act (Pub. L. No. 115-97), Republicans vowed that the tax code revamp would make filing taxes as simple as filling out a form the size of a postcard. Mnuchin's announcement came June 20 at a news briefing on Capitol Hill to mark the six-month anniversary of the tax overhaul.

Critics of this idea have said that while the new law offers simplification in some areas, much of the complexity in the tax code remains. Even if taxpayers can put all of the necessary information on one postcard-sized page, there are complicated calculations and other forms and instructions they have to refer to in order to complete the tax filing process, which can be time-consuming, the critics say.