What actually happened is that Form 1040 got sliced into multiple pages. Going from 2017 to 2018, the 1040 went from 79 lines [1] to 23 lines [2]. The remaining

What actually happened is that Form 1040 got sliced into multiple pages. Going from 2017 to 2018, the 1040 went from 79 lines [1] to 23 lines [2]. The remaining 50 or so lines? Moved to Schedules 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, and 6. So if your return had any amount of complexity, you probably needed more pages that year. Today's Form 1040 [3] is somewhere in the middle. The form itself has 38 lines, and the numbered schedules have been consolidated from 6 to 3. [1] https://www.irs.gov/pub/irs-prior/f1040--2017.pdf https://www.irs.gov/pub/irs-prior/f1040--2017.pdf [2] https://www.irs.gov/pub/irs-prior/f1040--2018.pdf https://www.irs.gov/pub/irs-prior/f1040--2018.pdf [3] https://www.irs.gov/pub/irs-prior/f1040--2023.pdf https://www.irs.gov/pub/irs-prior/f1040--2023.pdf