Crossposted; please forgive unnecessary duplicaiton.
Here are the replies I received concerning my post regarding BNA's
cancellation of their print copy of the IRS forms. Since at least half of
the replies were directed to me personally, I am removing names and e-mail
addresses.
I should mention that I DID receive a call from BNA to discuss the
situation. It would not appear that BNA is likely to reverse their
decisoin, but at least it shows that they are reading the listservs and
responding.
FRANK DRAKE
Arnstein & Lehr
CHICAGO
arnstein@mcs.net
Frank:
I know my personal tax attorney uses these forms extensively... he's a sole
practitioner and doesn't do much on the computer...
Wonder how he feels about this....
-----Original Message-----
From: Frank Drake [mailto:arnstein@mcs.net]
Sent: Monday, October 09, 2000 3:07 PM
To: law-lib; Lawlibref-l; Privatelawlib-l
Subject: BNA Tax Management IRS Forms
I recently received a letter from BNA informing me, as a subscriber to the
Tax Management Portfolios, that they were no longer updating the IRS forms
set which was included with the series. They stated that after talking
with many subscribers they determined that the series was not much used.
When I informed my tax paralegal he was most displeased, and he tells me
that our chief tax partner was very unhappy to hear the news. IN our
office, according to the paralegal, the set is used almost daily.
Clearly BNA never contacted our office regarding the use of the forms.
Yes, the forms are available electronically, especially via the web, but
most of my attorneys find it quicker to copy the from from the looseleaf
set than to go to the internet and downlaod.
Am I living in a vacuum and am the only one whose office makes such use of
the BNA forms?
What do other libraries use other than the web?
Many thanks.
FRANK DRAKE
Arnstein & Lehr
CHICAGO
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We are also disappointed that BNA will no longer publish IRS forms. We
subscribe to IRS forms by CCH and will use that as our source now.
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[ Part 1, Text/PLAIN (charset: ISO-8859-1 "Latin 1") 41 lines. ]
Frank, I find that we hardly ever refer to the books anymore. We either
pull forms from the IRS web site or the BNA Tax Management CD-ROM.
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We were surprised by the news, too, but have the GoForms
system on our network, as well as the free web stuff, and no
one complained to me after I announced the news. I made
sure, in advance, however, that we were adequately licensed
on the CD! Our hard copy was also used heavily.
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We use the BNA forms on the Internet - part of the BNA Portfolios on the Internet - and the attorneys and paralegals love them. Once you fill out the information for a client, it can automatically be inserted in any form without having to retype it. Plus, we don't have to worry about updating them.
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Frank,
We also received the letter and are displeased. Could you let me know if
you hear of any other good sources.
Thanks very much.
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Frank - We also make daily use of these forms in their print version, it
is easy to use with a good index. I just didn't/don't believe that the
cancellation was due to lack of subscribers. BNA is an employee owned
company that charges high prices for its products (in some cases well
earned) and with a profit potential for each title. If the profit falls
outside the target range, the title gets the ax. I wish we could make
them continuing publishing this title, but , what would happen to our
beloved and necessary democracy. I guess we'll all learn to use the web
version. (Excuse the long vent...)
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We used the BNA Tax Management IRS Forms frequently. I wasn't happy with
that decision either. I also wondered which subscribers they consulted
with. Also, it may be my imagination, but I don't think the print is
being updated as frequently.
We also use RIA tax forms.
&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&7
Dear Frank,
The same letter greeted me this morning. We are a 70 lawyer firm and
our set is used almost daily also. As a back-up I subscribe to RIA's TAX
ACTION COORDINATOR. It is a 10-volume set, but Volumes 4, 5, 6 & 7
specifically contain the IRS forms. Some of our attorneys and all of our
paralegals are aware that we can obtain forms from various Internet sites
but prefer to see the hard copy from our library.
Anyway, I just wanted to let you know that you are not alone. I would
like to look at their "hard evidence" to support such a decision. Speaking
for myself, BNA never contacted our firm.
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Frank,
Our tax attorneys and paralegals were also quite upset to hear about the
cancellation of this service. In addition to current forms, we maintained
an archive of superceded forms. Since we do quite a bit of estate work
there have been several occasions where we needed an old form and it was
not available from another source, even from the IRS. The internet sites
are good for the common forms, but many of the special forms cannot be
found out there.
We are currently looking at the CCH product and will probably replace the
BNA subscription with this. I would be curious to hear your responses if
you wouldn't mind posting them to the list. I also felt that BNA didn't
do their research before deciding to cancel this product in print.
&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&7
We have found some older forms that are still used that are not on the IRS
website because they haven't been redone in the last couple years. We are
keeping the volumes for just that purpose. Not all the IRS forms are on the
website.
&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&7
One of our partners still does that. His associates ALL love the
electronic product. I love it, too, since filing the updates was a big
pain! Since the forms are interactive they can just fill it out, save it
and print it. T
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Yikes! We are the only public law library in the state. I don't know
what our patrons (or staff) will do without them.
&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&
Our Law Library uses the forms and our professor who teaches taxes was
disappointed. We were not asked about our use either. We had just paid
for this service for next year and will not get a refund for the 5
volumes.
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I have always liked to have copies of the paper IRS forms around. But, I
can't say that anyone here really uses them, except maybe for personal use
at tax time. But also, this office of
our firm doesn't do tax.
There are two ways to view what BNA said in the letter. One is that BNA no
longer wants to produce the forms "for free" and is basically lying when
they say they held a survey. Another is that BNA took the survey from
sophisticated users, like its BNA electronic editions guys, rather than
sending surveys out to the paper subscribers so as to get the answer they
wanted. Or, of course, they might be truly committed to continuing the
paper but found to their amazement that nobody wanted it anymore.
As a "free" appendage to the Portfolios, the forms are a big cost to BNA and
if there is no longer an incentive to maintain a competitive edge by
"giving" it away, the incentive is to
cancel it and save its costs.
I don't believe BNA would be cancelling it if the service was independent of
the portfolios and we paid for it separately. Unless, their subscriber list
had fallen below the cost of producing
the service. I have no idea why BNA wouldn't or couldn't offer it as a
stand alone service rather than cancel it.
I took a survey here and from the people in the office today, none have
expressed an interest in seeking a new paper subscription. So I guess we are
going to use the Web as our new provider.
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I have a subscription to the Tax Management Revenue Forms and just
renewed my subscription thru October 2001. The set covers all the IRS
forms and are in greyish colored three ring binders. So, I am a little
surprised to see your email about the letter cancelling the set.
&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&
Hi, Frank!!! We use the CCH set of IRS forms. Work just as well as the
BNA, which we cancelled last year.
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Frank,
Here we use Tax Forms on CD from STF (www.superforms.com).
These are the same forms distributed on CD by RIA and CCH, only you get the
CDs faster, and you get access to their web site for updates between discs.
I know the people who say they really want paper forms are still out there,
but I know of no service that distributes the forms in paper anymore.
&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&
Frank- we use the forms alot also. I guess the library staff will have to
sit on the computer that much more often to pull the forms off for our
patrons. I never heard from BNA regarding my opinion of this. THANKS
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We were also dismayed at this news, and I took the statement about
contacting clients with a grain of salt.
In related news, I was contacted by my RIA rep that we may want to take
another look at their web product since RIA will be discontinuing some of
their print products and only putting them on the web. In a recent article,
I read that in an effort to reduce costs the trend among scholarly books
publishers is to include the footnotes or bibliographies with the hardbound
book but post these to a website. For how long future scholars interested
in following up the research may or may not be able to find them there is an
open question. We have case volumes in our collection dating from the 18th
century, I wonder how many of these websites will be up and running in 200
years?
I can't help feeling that we are entering into a new dark age where
information will no longer be housed in brick and mortar libraries and solid
books but in the ephemeral world of cyberspace with all of its dead-end
links and fickle access.
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No Frank, you're not the only one. Our set of BNA tax forms is heavily used
also. It makes me nuts when the publishers make these unilateral decisions
(I know...they SAID they'd asked patrons, but I don't really believe it) and
then try to tell us it will make our lives easier. My tax attorneys will use
the web, but many of the other attorneys, as well as the staff, rely on the
forms set. :-(
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I know of at least one company that still publishes sets of tax forms in print:
The Tax Form Library
518 West Main Street
Louisville, KY 40202
1-800-466-9110
They do state tax forms as well.
P.S. I prefer online and CD forms in every way, myself!
&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&
CCH is still publishing the Tax Forms in paper copy. The cost is about
$400 a year for the subscription
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In every firm I've worked in, those forms were HEAVILY used.
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Frank,
We use the BNA forms set here a lot, too. But we also have the CCH IRS
Forms set. They are shelved side-by-side.
I don't think we'd subscribe to the BNA set on-line; for that matter, we
may as well just use the ones on the IRS website! However, we'll
definitely keep the CCH print set if the other one goes under.
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Frank - My attorneys and paralegals use them CONSTANTLY. They are much
easier than the web site for quick reference (especially for the computer
challenged). They will be quite upset that BNA is discontinuing the
service. I guess we will subscribe to CCH - do they still have their
service?
&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&7
Frank, In addition to the web we also rely somewhat on the Kleinrocks IRS
Forms CD-ROM product. Greg
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We weren't too happy to see them go, either. We like to maintain an =
archive of forms, and the BNA is the easiest way to do that. Also, they =
are good backup. We have a forms disk from Kleinrock that is very good, =
but today there was something wrong with the printer settings that no-one =
could fix and there were little j's all over the page. Someone had an =
emergency, and we needed that print forms set to get the copies of forms =
we needed.
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In my humble opinion, this is the CLASSIC example of why it makes sense to
keep a hard copy on hand. BNA, are you listening?
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Frank,
We rely more on the CCH set (they have two sets dedicated to Forms and
Publications, respectively), and the IRS forms on the Internet. The BNA set
will not be missed at NG&E. Now here is MY question: since BNA is no
longer providing this service, will they reduce the subscription charge for
the TMPs, or was this a split-off cost to begin with?
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Frank Drake,
Your e-mail message regarding the BNA Tax Management IRS Forms was
forwarded to me. I am the Chair of my firm's Business Law Practice Group,
which includes the tax practice. We have the BNA's service for IRS Forms.
We do refer to the volumes on a regular basis. When we want a form to
complete, we will print it from the IRS web page. However, if we want to
review a form or its instructions, we will refer to the volumes. It is much
more efficient to use the volumes when researching an issue.
The issue we face, as many other firms, is reducing the size of our
library because of the cost of rent. The obvious questions is which
services to eliminate because the information can be obtained on line. We
have not made a decision yet as to the BNA IRS Forms, but it is a service
that could be eliminated to save space. I do not want BNA to make the
decision for us by terminating the service, but I am not certain we will
continue to maintaining the service.
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Subject: IRS FORMS
We were using the books also. However, we primarily use the forms via
CD-ROM now. We are receiving CCH Perform Plus. This gives you all state
and federal forms. The last disk of the year is an archive disk which you
can keep in the event you ever need historical forms. Many of the forms
are interactive in that they allow you to fill them out and then print
them. I may look at cancelling this service since we receive forms on
CD-ROM from RIA due to our CheckPoint subscription.
I have also been accessing forms through the internet. Once I am
confident that every state has their forms online, I may discontinue
CD-ROM products if I have to pay a subscription fee and just order the
archive disk once a year.
Hope this helps.
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Is it possible that a good substitute would be the GPO's "Federal Tax
Products". This is a CD Rom that provides(for each tax year) forms and
instructions, fillable forms, publications and notices, etc.
For 1999 prior years forms and instructions for the years 1994 to 1998
were included. It comes with early versions of the latest tax year forms
(in the Fall) and then again right after the forms are approved in a Final
Release.
I started getting them thru Accents in 1997 and now thru Bernan.
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