Preparing for a Paperless Tax Season

By Kenneth McCall
December 2006
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As tax season approaches many firms are still discussing “paperless” strategies to streamline their workflows and take advantage of new advances in digital storage and process improvement. If your firm is one of these, perhaps a systematic approach might be helpful.

The Outputs:
If one looks at tax processing from a systems viewpoint, there are really three outputs to the system: 1) Something to send to various government entities, 2) Something for your own files, and 3) Something for your client. There are ways to approach each of these that drive much of the paper out of the process.

The Government:
Most types of returns in most tax jurisdictions can be filed electronically. In fact, the IRS and many of its state counterparts actively encourage e-filing. Taking advantage of this electronic delivery process can save significant time and money for firms. Consider the costs of printing, assembling, preparing for mailing, postage and special handling costs, and other direct costs of mailing paper returns, and it’s easy to see why more and more firms are aggressively pursuing the benefits of e-filing. True, it takes some processes adjustments, and some clients will continue to resist for assorted reasons, but the more use a firm can make of electronic filing, the faster, easier, and cheaper delivery to government will be.

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