Pub Seventeen

[erchess]

I just downloaded IRS Pub 17 for the first time in several years and to my surprise what I got was a garden variety PDF. That's not horrible but based on posts here I was expecting some extra bells and whistles that would be useful in finding my way right to what I want. Did I misunderstand or is this year's version different or is there an electronic version I didn't get?

Many thanks.

[tilt53]

It looks like the same Pub 17 I've downloaded for years. Do you use the search feature? A couple of key words can really help you zero in.

[Mike Mac]

Pub 17

The version I downloaded has many nice hyperlinks to buzz you where you want to go and, as mentioned, the search function works nicely.

[gkaiseril]

Look for the blue underlined terms or page numbers. These are hyperlinks to the named section or page number. They missed the Table of Contents page and missed setting the PDF to open the bookmarks pane. Open the bookmarks pane (the page with the ribbon) and there are a list of sections. Click on the '+' to the left of the section and the list expands to show the chapters in that section. Click on the '+' for the chapter and the sections for the chapter appear. Click on the text and you are taken to that item.

There are even linked text to the IRS web site within the publication.

This is certainly an advance over the prior versions.

Do not forget that that the IRS was one of the first agencies to provide fill-in PDF forms for the tax forms.

The publication also does not have any security applied to it, so if you have a full version of Acrobat, you can extract page or add comments to pages.

It might be interesting to add the song track for 'Tax Man' or an animated cartoon two to the publication. The New Yorker has some interesting animated cartoons regarding taxes.