The hassles of saving tax records

Tuesday, July 17, 2012

Tax advisors usually insist that individuals and businesses save about six to seven years of tax records in order to comply with I.R.S. regulations. The government only has a certain amount of time to assess any taxes that were either filed correctly or missing less than 25 percent of a filer's income. Businesses are typically on the safer side when it comes to saving records – the thought is that erring on the side of caution is better than being unprepared when it comes to a future tax liens or penalties. Even the I.R.S. suggests saving a copy of your filed tax return indefinitely.

The problem with this philosophy is how much information is truly being gathered over this amount of time. Every single investment that has the ability to post a gain or a loss would need to be saved in order to adequately follow this guideline, which, for a business, amounts to more paperwork than it may have the space for.

Thankfully, the ability for businesses to digitize physical documents through a document conversion process allows companies to comply with standards and avoid future tax issues while eliminating the physical space this typically requires. With proper document management, a business can print any previous document directly from its servers, providing a copies of records in the future without the hassle of physical storage.

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