Tax Breaks

As the summer season reaches its peak, rest assured, Uncle Sam is spending our hard-earned tax dollars on his exotic vacation getaway. Okay, not really. In fact, the work of the tax man never ends—which could mean a hefty profit for distributors who add tax forms to their product lines.

Even before the current year’s April tax return deadline, manufacturers are occupied working on preliminary materials for the following season. Typically in March, different formats undergo a test run. New catalogs and brochures are also designed at this time for distribution in July. Neville Johnson, vice president of Houston-based Apex Business Systems, noted, “It is said that the early bird catches the worm. This is true with tax forms. The earlier the distributor gets to his or her potential customer, the better chance [he or she has] to lock in a sale.”

For the sales-savvy distributor, tax forms are an easy sale almost guaranteeing repeat business. Johnson said that because this is a seasonal product end-users need, customers are prone to pay the market price without too much objection. Furthermore, distributors’ sales can benefit when the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) issues a major change to a pre-existing form. Johnson believes this year is particularly exciting for distributors because the IRS has changed the W-2 form, consequently forcing users of the IRS official format to re-program. In years past, the Social Security number position occupied Box D. Now, it will appear in Box A. The change, Johnson told Print Professional, places the social security number in a spot where it is not visible through the window of an envelope. Distributors can take advantage of this change by making cold calls to potential clients, performing follow-up calls on regular customers and picking up new orders because nobody is locked into a specific format, he added.