As we wait for Congress to decide whether or not they will extend the provisions that expired at the end of 2011, the IRS has made changes to the following forms that are not related to late legislation:

Form 8867 (Paid Preparer’s Earned Income Credit Checklist)
In the IRS‘s continuing effort to ensure the preparer is following due diligence in preparing EITC returns, a new page 4 has been added to Form 8867. This page has additional questions related to the preparer’s due diligence requirements concerning documentation that the preparer relied on to claim the earned income tax credit for Tax Year 2012 as follows:

• Residency of Qualifying Child(ren)
• Disability of Qualifying Child(ren)
• Schedule C income and existence of business

To learn more about these changes see the current draft of the 2012
Form 8867.

Form 8863 (Education Credits)
For each person that is claiming either the American Opportunity or Lifetime Learning Credit, the following additional information must now be included on the 2012 Form 8863, Part III:

• Name and address of the educational institution the student attended
• Additional questions regarding Form 1098-T
• Additional questions on the eligibility of the student for an education credit for the current year

To see what additional information the IRS is requesting, see the current draft of the 2012 Form 8863.

Schedule 8812 (Child Tax Credit)
In the past this was Form 8812 (Additional Child Tax Credit). It is now Schedule 8812 (Child Tax Credit) and is used to not only claim the additional child tax credit but is now used to answer a question regarding the substantial presence test for those children that have an ITIN for whom the taxpayer is claiming a child tax credit on their Tax Year 2012 Federal return.

To review the changes to this schedule see the current draft of the 2012Schedule 8812.