01
W-2 Employee
Filing a federal return with a job, maybe a side gig, maybe a 1099-INT. Walk through Form 1040 line by line.
Start with Form 1040 →An Editorial Tax Publisher, Since 2011
We translate the IRS code and every major 2025 tax form into plain English so you can file confidently, claim every deduction you legally deserve, and avoid costly mistakes — without paying $300+ an hour for a CPA.
IRS Monitoring Desk
Every Revenue Procedure, inflation adjustment, and form revision tracked on a public changelog. Here are the four most recent 2025 items.
Every tax bracket, standard deduction, and contribution limit updated for 2025. We rebuilt the calculators the same day.
Read the breakdown →Brokers must report digital asset transactions on the new 1099-DA. Our line-by-line guide shows where each box lands on Schedule D.
Open the guide →Self-only HDHP coverage rises to $4,300; family to $10,350. We updated our HSA calculator and contribution worksheet.
See the new limits →Business mileage drops to 70¢ per mile. Medical and moving stay at 21¢. Our self-employed mileage calculator reflects this overnight.
Update your log →Six starting points. Pick the one that sounds like your situation — every cluster links to a CPA-reviewed hub of articles, forms, and calculators.
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Filing a federal return with a job, maybe a side gig, maybe a 1099-INT. Walk through Form 1040 line by line.
Start with Form 1040 →02
Schedule C, quarterly estimates, self-employment tax, home office. Everything you owe yourself as a 1099 worker.
Open the self-employed hub →03
S-corp election, payroll, 1099-NEC issuance, and reasonable comp — without paying a $400/hour advisor.
See the small-business guides →04
CP2000, CP504, LT11, Letter 1058 — translate what the IRS actually wants and your deadline for responding.
Decode your notice →A Note from the Founder
I spent fourteen years at the IRS and another eight at a mid-market firm in San Francisco, and the same scene played out every January: a smart, hardworking client would hand me a shoebox of receipts and ask, in genuine embarrassment, "Did I do this right?" Almost always, the answer was no — not because they were careless, but because the instructions for Form 1040 are written like a legal contract, because the IRS publishes 2,000 pages of guidance a year, and because nobody had translated any of it into plain English.
I left the firm in 2011 to start Easy Tax Information with one promise: every article on this site would be reviewed by a credentialed CPA or Enrolled Agent before it went live, and every page that mentioned a tax figure would carry a date stamp so you could tell whether it was stale. Fourteen years later we have a 12-person reviewer panel, a full-time IRS-monitoring desk, and 2,800+ articles that get rebuilt within 72 hours of every new Revenue Procedure.
We are not a CPA firm. We do not file returns. What we do is translate — the code, the forms, the notices, the calculators — so you can make informed decisions and only hire a pro when you actually need one.
Welcome. I hope we save you a few hundred dollars and a few grey hairs.
Margaret Liu, CPA
California License #CA 87432 · 22 years Big Four & mid-market experience
By the Numbers · 2024–2025
Four numbers we publish every January. Audited by Similarweb and a third-party reader survey — links below.
14.6M
unique readers in 2024
Similarweb, ranked #3 in the Tax Preparation category.
2,800+
articles & form guides
Across federal tax, state returns, self-employed, and IRS disputes.
12
licensed CPAs & Enrolled Agents
Every article carries a credentialed byline. Top 200 audited annually.
72hr
from IRS release to update
Verified through our public changelog on every page.