The Willett Brothers founded ATX Forms in 1992 with the goal of creating tax software in a rural setting that combined high-tech work and home cooking. Steve Willett created his first tax template in 1985 using a new Apple Macintosh computer and Microsoft Excel. ATX offered federal and state tax forms that allowed users to enter data at affordable prices. Over time, ATX grew to be a leading tax software provider before being acquired by other companies to expand their tax and accounting solutions.

1. It was the Willett Brothers’ vision to create a company
in rural areas to gain the best of both worlds – high
tech and home-cooking. Steve Willett claims he got into
the income tax software business by a combination of
fate and accident.
It all started with Family…Steve and Glynn Willett, two
brothers from New England, founded ATX Forms, Inc. in
1992. Steve developed the roots of the company in
Ithaca, New York. Glynn, a practicing CPA, concentrated
on the business development side without leaving his
home in Washburn, Maine.
They didn’t set out to change the world, just to pioneer
a better way of building tax software. The goal was to
work with people they liked and respected, to build
premium quality tax software at a fair price, and to
offer excellent support – especially during tax season.
They figured if they were honest and straightforward,
people would want to do business with them. They were
right.
ATX opened shop temporarily at 415 Avenue A in Fort
Pierce, Florida, on May 26, 1998 with nine employees;
and shortly after moved to 1102 S. U.S. One in Fort
Pierce, the former Tribune Building.
Steve Willett created his first tax template in 1985.
He had just purchased a new Apple Macintosh computer
and the new spreadsheet program from Microsoft called
Excel. To learn the new program, Steve created a

2. spreadsheet template that performed most of the 1040
calculations.
While the Internal Revenue Service offered a CD ROM
containing all federal forms (about 700 of them) for
$20, you could not enter data on the forms. ATX offered
the Saber Tax Solver program containing all the federal
forms for $39, and state forms for $59, and you could
enter data on those forms. Other packages included the
SaberBiz package for $189. Tailored to consultants and
businesses, that software included more than 200
associated forms and schedules, a tax planner, a client
organizer, and invoicing. The highest priced was the
$495 FedMax package that contained every federal
program.
Steve met Ray Heizer at a MacWorld show. Heizer was
starting a catalog that sold Excel templates. In
succeeding years Steve’s templates grew to a half-
million-dollar business through Heizer’s catalog.
Glynn was studying to become a CPA so Steve enlisted
Glynn’s help with tax questions and debugging. Steve and
Glynn started ATX when Lotus 1-2-3 developed WYSIWYG
and allowed tax templates to enter the PC market.
Steve and Glynn worked together to make ATX the
dominant professional low-cost tax software provider.
ATX was the leader in flexible, cost-effective, and
comprehensive tax software.
To offer forms on the Internet, President and Chief
Executive Officer, Glynn Willett, unveiled Zillion

3. Forms (zillionforms.com) that would link directly to
the Internal Revenue Service’s internet site. Zillion
Forms was different because it was geared toward the
individual, and it was free. Zillion Forms contained
more than 5,000 state and federal tax applications with
government, state, and city forms available.
In 2002, ATX became a division of Universal Tax
Systems, Inc., one of the nation’s leading providers of
business-to-business information solutions; cementing a
relationship with Kleinrock, a well-recognized provider
of quality tax research and integrating ATX’s powerful
tax preparation software with Kleinrock’s sterling tax
research solutions to present tax professionals with a
superior total office solution.
In the summer of 2006, CCH, a Wolters Kluwer business,
and a leading provider of tax and accounting research
and software solutions, acquired ATX. CCH and ATX
shared the same commitment: To focus on customers’
needs and deliver best-of-breed integrated research and
software workflow solutions that are designed to meet
those special needs.
In October 2006, CCH announced the creation of a new
organization within their Tax and Accounting division –
the Small Firm Services (SFS) group. The group
included the ATX and TaxWise businesses focused on
ensuring that CCH best served small- to mid-sized
markets with the solutions, services, and pricing that
over 55,000 customers value today.

4. SFS and TaxWise were awarded the IRS VITA contract for
2010 with four option years after that marking the 15th
consecutive year that Universal Tax Systems, Inc. (now
known as SFS) had won the right to provide the tax
software used at more than 10,000 IRS-sponsored VITA,
TCE and TAC sites, and IRS employee e-filing. Together,
these locations prepared more than 3 million federal
and 2 million state returns in 2009.