California Form 540NR Short Form Eliminated For 2019
The State of California Franchise Tax Board recently announced the elimination of the 540NR Short Form beginning with 2019 tax returns.
That means the California Form 540NR Short Form
is now obsolete.
Non-resident income tax filers will use California Form 540NR Long Form
for 2019 returns.
Only don't call it the Long Form anymore. California Form 540NR Long is now renamed to 2019 540NR California Nonresident or Part-Year Resident Income Tax Return. Long Form has been removed from the title printed on this year's forms.
Why did California eliminated the 540NR Short Form?
- Less than 3% of nonresident and part-year resident taxpayers file using the short form.
- Few income tax preparation software developers support the short form.
- Manually prepared short form tax returns represent 2% of the filed forms.
The trend over the last few years has been to eliminate or make obsolete short forms, and in some cases easy and non-resident forms as well. Let's hope the trend continues so that, for individuals at least, fewer income tax forms are produced and required.
A simplified modular approach should save everyone time and money including the governments who have to maintain three or more versions of the same form.
Printable California Form 540 and Form 540-2EZ are here on our website.