Many clients care a great deal about the environment, and the number of clients who care is only going to continue to increase as the effects of climate change are more and more visible to the average joe. Running a paperless office will build an image as a “green company”, and the benefits of such an image will only grow as the years go by and average temperature goes up.  
But to clients, one of the most important things about a return to them is preparation speed. I’m not sure how our clients got the idea that tax returns should be fast (this isn’t McDonalds!), yet it seems to be what they expect just the same. And while an experienced preparer can get through the tax questions and input the necessary information form the documents quite fast with practice, the printer will not print the many pages necessary for a return any faster even if the tax preparer were the Flash.
But a paperless return would not need a printer at all, and thus could be completed faster. This would mean happier clients who are more likely to do their returns with us next year as well. This also means higher productivity, as a preparer could perform more returns in less time now that they don’t need to wait for the printer every return. Getting rid of paper also eliminates those heavy metal file cabinets filled with client’s confidential information that need to be sorted and locked constantly during the business day. Time spent sorting files and making sure file cabinets are properly kept locked is time NOT spent doing tax returns, tending to clients, and earning the income the franchise needs.

The transition would be very simple, as we already have the systems in place we need for a paperless office. We have the scanning equipment that we’d need to scan client documents to store them digitally on the cloud. Corporate already supplies the franchise with the cloud storage space we need as part of the franchise fees that are already paid as they encourage their franchises running paperless offices. We already have the digital signature pads they would need to sign all digital tax returns – there is no question about the legality of this as it is what we already do and the IRS allows it. We already have the internet connectivity we need to perform these returns. The tax software we already use supports all of this. This means that switching would require no upfront costs, or even any direct costs at all.
However, there are necessary procedural changes to how we do business that would need to be performed. There obviously wouldn’t be a “printing” aspect to preparing a return but instead a “scanning” aspect. Rather than store documents to be later scanned and shredded, we would scan them during the return so they could be returned to the client, as we would no longer have anywhere to store physical documents. All refund checks would need to be mailed directly to the client rather than printed at our offices as we would no longer have printers or check stock. Potential “Plan “B regarding this is that checks could be printed and picked up at a centralized location such as franchise HQ or one of the larger offices just in case this service proves too popular to eliminate entirely, though I do not feel this will be necessary. Finally, as uploading to the cloud and scanning will become tasks preformed during returns, every preparer is going to need the computer skills necessary to preform these tasks. This might require an extra training module – though as all those about printing and check stock could be removed, training would still be shorter overall.   
