New 1040 tax form will be the size of a postcard

U.S. Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin said on Wednesday that new tax forms, designed to make the filing process clearer and simpler for Americans, will be released next week.

“Next week we will be unveiling the new 1040 and it will be a postcard as we promised,” he said during a press conference celebrating the six-month anniversary of the passage of tax reform. “Hardworking taxpayers won’t have to spend nearly as much time filling out their [tax forms].”

The 1040 form is the U.S. individual income tax return. Republicans promised to simplify the filing process for taxpayers, famously claiming the forms would be postcard-sized.

The Tax Cuts and Jobs Act was signed in December, giving the IRS an inadequate amount of time to develop, distribute and collect new forms in accordance with the new law. The IRS is still expected to release a new W4 form. This year, employers are able to use the forms already on file, which has posed problems for taxpayers because the sweeping tax changes address everything from personal exemptions to the standard deduction. As a result, many people have had inadequate amounts withheld from their paychecks, meaning, come April, they could be in for a big surprise from the IRS, experts have warned.

When asked in February about how many errors Treasury has seen so far this year, Mnuchin declined to comment directly, pointing taxpayers to the IRS’s withholding calculator.

However, overall Mnuchin deemed tax reform a “game changer” for Americans.

“We finally have a tax code that works for hardworking taxpayers,” he said.

House Ways and Means Committee Chairman Rep. Kevin Brady added that while passing tax reform wasn’t an easy feat, it has already begun to change Americans’ lives for the better.

“We’ve transformed this nation from asking where are the jobs to asking where are the workers,” Brady said.