The editors

Every guide on Formspedia is signed by the desk that covers the agency issuing the form: the Formspedia IRS desk for federal returns, the Formspedia California desk for California’s tax forms, the Formspedia-Redaktion BMF und ELSTER for German federal forms. This page explains what a desk is, what it checks before a guide goes live, and where to reach the editors.

What a desk is

A desk is the part of the editorial team that handles one agency. It works only on that agency’s forms and writes in the language of those forms, so a Texas guide and a French guide are never signed by the same desk. Each desk has a profile page with the agency it covers, a link to the agency’s own website and the list of its guides.

A desk is not a person, and its profile says so. Formspedia does not put invented names, job titles or photos on guides.

What the editors do

The editors decide which forms get a guide and in what order. For each one they collect the agency’s own material: the form, its instructions, and the agency’s web pages about it. The guide is written in the language of the form, and every line number, deadline and amount in it is compared with that material before the page goes live.

Agencies change their forms. When a new revision comes out, the guide is checked against it again, and the date at the top of the page moves only after that check.

Why the byline names a desk

A guide goes through several hands before it is published: finding the official sources, writing, checking the figures, and later rechecking when the form changes. The byline names the desk that answers for all of those steps. If something in a California guide is wrong, the California desk fixes it, whoever made the original mistake.

Named authors and reviewers

Some guides will be written or reviewed by a named person, for example a tax adviser who checks guides for the country where they practise. Their real name then appears at the top of the guide and links to a profile page with their background, their professional registration where they have one, and the guides they worked on. A photo on such a profile is a photo of that person.

The desks

One desk for each agency, grouped by country. A desk’s name links to its profile once it has published guides.

The rules we follow

Which sources count, how a form’s revision is dated, what is left out when it cannot be confirmed, and how corrections are recorded: all of it is on the editorial policy page.

Contact the editors

A wrong figure, a replaced form or a dead link to an agency page can be reported to [email protected] or with the “Report a problem with this form” button on a guide. Please include the page address. Confirmed errors are fixed on the page, and a correction that changes the meaning of a guide is noted at the end of it.