As part of my US personal tax return to the IRS this year I need to fill out some esoteric IRS forms that are not supported by most personal tax filing software so I have to fill them out manually, and I'm making use of the sister Instructions documents that the IRS makes available with every form.
However I've run into questions I have as some fields in some forms are unclear and/or hard to understand how to answer correctly and the Instructions documents do not provide any clarity (for example, form 5471 Schedule O has a field "Internal Service Center where filed" which I don't know how to answer as I mail my return to a non-service-center IRS PO box, not a service-center (I cannot use e-file as I am not a Tax Professional with access to e-file, and Individual e-file does not support form 5471, for example).
I called the IRS's phone number and after navigating their phone menu I received a prerecorded message informing me that they no-longer provide help with filing out forms on the phone.
So the only other option I can think of is to visit my local IRS office for a Face-to-Face meeting, but that seems excessive when I only need help with a few fields.
I'd like to stick to free, first-party forms of assistance. As a matter of principle I don't believe I should have any pay any expenses (beyond postage costs) to file my tax return.