Test Your Faxing IQ this Tax Season

Posted by on Mar 5, 2010 in History, Information, Things forgotten | 0 comments

Like quizes? humm. How about a quest post desigened like a quiz?

By Steve Adams 

            Before email and filing tax returns online, there was the fax. At one time it was THE way to transmit important documents (such as W-2 statements and real estate tax information) quickly from one location to another.

            While it’s normal to think that faxing has gone the way of the typewriter, it’s still a big part of the accounting world, and even the preferred method of document transfer in some cases.

            So to make sure you have the most current information – and a good store of knowledge should you appear as a contestant on Jeopardy! and the Daily Double is a fax-related question – we offer the following quiz.

Fax Quiz

 Q1. Faxing was invented in:

  1.  
    1. 1843
    2. 1945
    3. 1972
    4. 1984

 

  1. The correct answer is A. 1843—almost 20 years before the first Federal income tax was levied. The technology didn’t really become common in offices until the mid-1980s, but the basic concept was patented more than 150 years prior by Alexander Bain.

 

Q2.  The amount of money spent on faxing the last few years has:

  1.  
    1. Increased
    2. Decreased
    3. Remained the same

 

  1. If you guessed B you’d be in good company. But you’d be wrong. The truth is the dollar volume spent on faxing has grown steadily over the last few years, and is projected to continue doing so.

 

Q3. Privacy laws allow you to send documents with a client’s Social Security Number on them by either email or fax:

  1.  
    1. True
    2. False

 

  1. False, with a caveat. Social Security Number protection laws vary from state-to-state, but it is illegal in at least some states to transmit a document that contains an SSN via standard email because it is considered too insecure, i.e. email can be intercepted or misdirected too easily. Even if the law allows the use of email, though, it goes against the industry’s best practices for the same reasons. Faxes are immune to this type of interception by the nature of how they are transmitted. Internet fax services that provide 128-bit encryption provide an additional level of security.

 

Q4. The number of trees that could be saved each year by delivering just one percent (1%) of paper faxes in America as electronic documents is:

  1.  
    1. 15 million
    2. 27.2 million
    3. 52.5 million
    4. 73.5 million

 

  1. It is 73.5 million. That’s just one percent in one country. In addition, moving from fax machines to an Internet fax service would save energy and cut down on the waste stream by eliminating the need to dispose of the machine, toner containers and wasted paper.

 

Q5. Some advantages of an Internet fax service over a fax machine are:

  1.  
    1. No need to go back to the office to read your faxes
    2. Internet fax accounts never have busy signals on inbound faxes
    3. Because they’re electronic, your faxes can travel with you more easily
    4. Only A and C
    5. All of the above

 

  1. All of the above. Since Internet fax services are tied to your email account, you can receive faxes anywhere you can get email. That also means you can store your faxes on your laptop.

 

So how did you score? 4-5 correct: You are a faxing genius! 2-3 correct: You’re smarter than the average bear when it comes to faxes. 0-1 correct: Your old VCR is probably still flashing 12:00.

 

Steve Adams is vice president of marketing for Protus (www.protus.com), a provider of communications tools for small-to-medium-businesses and enterprise organizations, including the MyFax internet fax service; my1voice, a virtual phone service.

 He can be reached at sadams@protus.com.

 

Thanks for the post Steve.

 

If you have a post that you think should be written for the “Taxing Public”, please send it my way, I will do my best to get it out.

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