Thank you all for your help. I've decided to drink a vial of soldering acid rather than continue to deal with meaningless federal rules and regulations. The camel's back straw was when the IRS announced its new user fees. From ASPPA:

CAUTION: Beginning February 1, 2011, the IRS requires that a Courier 10 point font only is to be used when preparing an application[e.g., 5300].

Wonder what happens if you script, bold it, or type in all upper case?

Perhaps rejection? Maybe that question will be addressed in the next Bill passed by Congress and signed by the President - hopefully that won't occur until 2013? You should wait around to find out.




"Rejection is one thing, but rejection from a fool is cruel...." Morrissey

Now that's a suggestion I can live with!

Rev. Proc. 2011-6 (FDL Rev Proc, not the user fee Rev Proc) states: "In order for documents to be properly scanned, documents submitted should not be stapled or bound and the Courier 10 point font should be used when preparing the application."

The non-staple rule was put in place a year ago, but I wonder how many still submit stapled documents because they don't know the rule. Have any of you who submitted stapled documents in 2010 had your documents returned? I suspect not. And, because the language is "should" (not "must"), I don't figure there will be rejections.

But the suggestion in the Rev. Proc is crazy. Takes me back to the days of the red IRS forms where typewritten entries had to be within the boxes. Gads . . .!!, do any of you have plan docs in 10-pt courier? That went out after Selectric typewriters disappeared!!

I receive a postcard today from the State of Missouri. They indicated that the MO. 1099-G (reporting income tax refund) would no longer be mailed out but you can obtain it on-line at their website. No problem. However, no doubt if they don't mail out a reminder postcard each year this all will be forgotten. Unlike this sentence, I believe the postcard from MO was prepared with an Arial rather than Courier font.

Scanned? If that is the reasoning, then why not submit a PDF?

Shhhhhhhhh. Your suggestion might cause a leapfrog to filing electronically. Then, we'll have to take a Wasserman test, give a DNA sample, and obtain a PIN which will cost $73.69.

Sieve - FWIW, I read that instruction to apply to the appplication, not the plan documens, for example. But my instruction to staff was that "it wasn't all that clear..."

Someone needs to write a letter to the Service pointing out politely that the forms on the IRS website which contain the "fill-in" feature do not use the Courier font, thus making the Service's "fill-in" forms useless.

By "fill-in", I mean it has boxes in the proper places in the electronic version and you can type in them and print the completed form. Such as this one: http://www.irs.gov/pub/irs-pdf/f5300.pdf

Courier is a fixed width font. This means that 5 upper case W's should take the same amount of line space as 5 lower case i's. You can see for yourself that the form I linked does not meet this simple test.

(By the way, being a fixed width font makes Courier easier for OCR (optical character recognition) scanning.)

In your experience, has this been successful?

"Somebody get a sponge" - Larry David

Oooh, I sense a challenge! Just remember in 8.635 years when the Service changes the forms to Courier that it will have been my doing!

Don't forget to write your letter in Courier 10 point so they can scan it and have it get lost in the shuffle for a while!

I also read that the Courier 10 font "should be used" when preparing the application form. I am getting ready to send in one this month. I used to send everything in a nice, organized binder so they wouldn't lose anything (and even had a call from one reviewing agent that thanked me). Maybe I'll start using lots of rubber bands instead!

Thanks for starting this, Andy!

First time anyone's ever thanked me for having a bad attitude!