10 tax forms you need to know before you file

Ask the IRS’s website for a list of all federal tax forms and you’ll get over 900 results. That’s a ton of forms.

Happily, you probably don’t need to care about most of them. But here are 10 major IRS tax forms you should know about before you file.

Three of them — the W-2, 1098 and 1099 — are forms that may be sent to you with information you’ll need in order to file. The others are forms that you might need to fill out as part of your tax return.

The biggie: Form 1040

The Form 1040 (and its buddies the 1040EZ and 1040A) is the star of the tax show — it’s the form where you tally your income and deductions and calculate your actual tax bill. The 1040 “long form” itself is just two pages long, but to fill in its 70+ lines, you usually have to fill out lots of other forms.

There are rules about which of the three 1040s you can use; here’s a quick breakdown.

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