TAP 05-026

Form 5500 and 5500EZ, Downloadable

Statement of Issue:

For small businesses, the current IRS procedures for obtaining and filing Form 5500, Annual Return/Report of Employee Benefit Plan, or 5500EZ, are overly burdensome because of the difficulty of acquiring a version of the form that can be filed with the IRS while the alternative of filing the form electronically can be very expensive. The forms on the website are not machine-readable, so taxpayers must call and have paper forms mailed or pay for electronic filing.

Proposal:

TAP recommended that, as part of the IRS technology upgrade, the IRS develop software to obtain necessary data from printed versions of Forms 5500 and 5500EZ downloaded from the IRS website and that taxpayers be allowed to submit these printed versions of forms downloaded from the web.

In the interim, until downloaded forms can be submitted, TAP recommended that the IRS send two copies of these forms each year to each taxpayer that submitted a paper copy in the preceding reporting year.

Response Notes: