tax dollars trying to get to work

this is the time of year that, being self employed, I receive all my 1099 forms from all the people who paid me anything in the past year.

A 1099 isn't a whole lot different from a w-2, except no taxes are taken out (and since the "employee contribution" is not there to mask it, you have to face the fact that 15, not 8, per cent of your money is going to social security). But along with receiving these chincy forms, since I also hire people on occasion, I also have to fill out, send out, and file 1099's.

Here is my complaint. To file form 1099, you have to order the forms-- you MAY NOT print them out like all other tax forms. So weeks later if, the IRS didn't misplace your order (this has happened to me), you get a stack of these forms in the mail. Each form has room on it for 2 people's info-- and for me to fill it out, I have to put my name, address, and ssn twice-- once on the top half, once on the bottom half. When you have to fill out 80 of these, having to repeatedly enter this information by hand is a real pain.

The forms are 6 pages deep-- the top sheet goes to the IRs, the next 3 layers go to the payee, and I keep the bottom 2 (or something like that). Once they are filled out, I have to tear the top sheet off and put it in a stack, then take the next 3 layers, rip those out of the form's binding, and then tear those 2 in half (it's like paper mache class) to send the hard copy to each of the 2 recipients listed on the page. (hopefully I, or the assistant i hired to do this, pressed hard enough with my pen so the info got imprinted on the lower sheets.)

You would think that the process of providing this info, so important to the tax structure, would be more automated than it is, but it ain't. there is no way to print up your own 1099's either-- you MUST order them from the IRS.

It is an absolute no-brainer that all of this can and should be done electronically-- the "technology" (if you can call it that) of the current system is reminiscent of bob cratchett working with a quill pen. I can only assume that the people who fill these forms out for a fee have lobbied hard to keep us from using computers for something so complicted as filling out forms.