Document scanning solutions can help to effectively organize tax documents. The Michigan Department of Treasury has recently recommended tax payers to stop using staples on documents when filing their tax returns. Each year, the Treasury receives and processes more than 1.3 million pieces of U.S. Mail at 51 post office boxes and two ZIP Code mailboxes. When the staples are removed, the paper rips and holes are created. Thus, each staple consumes the time of mail operation staff to recondition the documents before bulk document scanning and processing. The task of removing staples may slow down individual income tax refunds and other services.
Any staple holes or tears near the return code number may impair the IRS’s ability to machine scan the type of documents. Instead of using staples, it is advised to use binder clips, paper clips and rubber bands for fastening state tax documents together. Staples should only be applied where tax form instructions advice you to use them.
Filing your Federal income tax return with Internal Revenue Service (IRS) can be done electronically or via paper returns. Paper tax returns are electronically scanned by the IRS. Optical scanning of tax returns enables the IRS to capture data more accurately and efficiently. To avoid the hazards of using paper, the state also recommends filing electronically, which is “the quickest and easiest way to get a refund.”
According to the IRS’s filing statistics, “Around 149,684,000 individual income tax returns they received in 2014, 125,821,000 were e-filed, which means a three percent increase from 2013.”
Tax filers can prepare and transfer documents to the IRS by digitizing paper documents to an electronic storage medium that lets the IRS view them without using the software application that created them. While submitting tax returns on paper, IRS requires taxpayers to sign individual income tax returns electronically. IRS also shares methods of signing individual income tax returns with an electronic signature available for use by taxpayers.
