Fax Line

[zeros]

I don't know who has a separate fax line. I have no employees and one phone line for the fax also. Of course, this causes some problems as I have to know when the fax is coming in or the voice mail will pick up. Anybody know what a separate fax line costs?

[Burke]

Should be the same as a local phone line. We have always had a separate line for fax.

[AJsTax]

We used to use

a rollover box, I can't remember the name, that sensed the type of call and routed the fax calls to that machine and the regular calls to the phone. It worked well and was a simple matter of plugging in the power, and three phone lines, one incoming, one to the fax and one to the phone. I believe the box cost about as much as one or two months of an extra line.

[Gretel]

I don't know who has a separate fax line. I have no employees and one phone line for the fax also. Of course, this causes some problems as I have to know when the fax is coming in or the voice mail will pick up. Anybody know what a separate fax line costs?

Zeros, I have my faxes attached to my e-mail. I did this in two steps. First I had a service (Callwave) where I could only receive faxes and it was free up to a certain number of pages, which I never reached. I still used my fax machine for sending faxes.

After I got my scanner I switched to another service. Now I pay $8.95 at their (Send2fax) lowest level for incoming and outgoing. The main reason I switched is that they offer this service with an 800 number. I am in a small community and basically every fax is long distance.

I didn't have problems with either one, maybe once that it took a while getting faxes. I even used this service with the IRS and it didn't take a minute to show up in my inbox.

[FEDUKE404]

Fax goes the way of the dinosaur

I was recently in the market for a new piece of equipment and was looking at a combo printer/copier/scanner/fax.

More than one person asked WHY I was even considering a fax in the first place. "Don't you know those things are soon going to be as obsolete as a rotary phone?" was another comment.

The more I thought about it, the more I agreed.

Most people now can scan (with better quality/speed) a document and send it to someone via an email attachment. And you don't need a separate phone line or equipment.

Actually, many of my more computer literate clients have already started sending me ALL of their tax documents in such a manner.

Try it.....you'll like it!!

FE

[oceanlovin'ea]

fax line

I have a separate fax line with Verizon and it costs me around $33 a month. As soon as tax season is over, I am going to switch to an internet fax company. Hmmm. Maybe that would be a good job for my employee/husband.

They advertise for around $10 per month. I forget now which one I was looking at.

But that seems like a better deal than a land line for a fax machine. I am going to change.

Linda

[PIGLEE]

I have used MyFax.com for years. It is great for 10.00 a month. I would never go back to a fax machine. Copies are clearer, and if I loose the paper, I can always print another one.

[lenboush]

I use maxemail (www.maxemail.com). They convert a fax to pdf and send it to me automatically as an email attachment. Works great and only costs $24 per year.

The only problem is that it isn't a locla number os a few clients complained. I found an "800" service that would forward calls from a toll free number to the fax number for only about $5 a month. Now everyone seems to be happy.

[Lion]

Fax

I have a free-standing fax machine on an AT&T land line, plain vanilla service with no extra services. In fact, we have an extraordinarily cheap long distance service on that line since it's cheaper than adding on to the AT&T basic rate. We keep it to send faxes that are documents that already exist outside my computer and to have a land line in case of power failures when we lose all our fancy computerized, cable lines. We can plug in an old telephone and make calls. (Our cells have spotty service in our town out in the woods.)

I also have eFax on my computer to send and receive faxes. I love it. Don't remember how much I paid, since I paid annually in advance to save a bit. I upgraded from the free service to be able to pick my own number. Faxes go into my computer, so I can choose not to print out junk and duplicates and unneeded materials to save toner and paper. I get an email with a link. Or, if I'm away from my computer, I can go online from any computer to their message center to retrieve my faxes.

My younger clients scan everything and attach to emails. That's handy when it's an Excel spreadsheet that I can then open on my computer and manipulate. Both email attachments and eFax receipts are great to store directly into clients' files without ever having to print out or handle paper copies.

[dsi]

Like others, I use an efax service and my faxes come and go over the internet through email. I've used it now for 4 years and it is awesome. I'll never go back to a fax line or a fax machine. I use J2fax.

[geekgirldany]

I use Efax also. I receive my faxes that way. I still have an old fax machine to send faxes as Efax can charge a good bit to send a fax. I believe it depends on what plan you pick but I faxed a tax return to client through EFax and I got a $10.00 fee for it.

[Lion]

Cheap line

My plain vanilla telephone line dedicated to my free-standing fax was only about $11/month, and as I said was also insurance for power failures and losing my cable telephone lines. But, with the government fees and taxes and a couple of price increases, it's now over $19/month. Will rethink it at some point.

[Koss]

Fax

I use a service called Fax Thru Email, offered by GoDaddy.

Very similar to the products described by others; offers a choice between a Scottsdale, Arizona telephone number or an 800 number. Pricing is similar to what others are describing in this thread.

Here's the link:

http://www.godaddy.com/gdshop/email/internet-fax.asp?ci=9023

GoDaddy is an utterly ridiculous name, but they are actually one of the biggest web hosting companies in the world. Our e-mail and domain hosting are with them also, and their service has been excellent.

The biggest drawback that you have to be aware of is that with these services, you do not own the telephone number. That's why you're not paying a phone bill. If you cancel the service, you lose the number. They'll retire it for 30 days or something, and then give it to a new customer. You can't switch to a different provider and keep the phone number.

With that being said, many of our clients do send us documents by e-mail, such as PDF files of their W-2 or their 1099-B, which they downloaded from the employer's HR platform or from the broker's website.

I've said this before, but as a society, we are moving in an increasingly paperless direction. In our profession, this trend may be accelerated, since what we do is closely tied to banking and finances.

With many of our clients, we have begun charging an extra fee to provide a paper copy of their tax return. The product we deliver to the client is either a password-protected PDF by e-mail, or a CD-ROM disc. For really good clients with expensive returns, we might even deliver the product on an inexpensive USB flash drive. It's still cheaper than the cost of printing and postage.

We are a small firm, and we use common sense. We will not charge for a paper copy of the return if, for example, we know that the client literally does not own a computer.

But we are attempting to "train" our more sophisticated clients to give and receive documents in a digital format whenever possible.

I agree that traditional fax machines will eventually become obsolete. This won't happen very soon, though. Traditional fax is still an important way of instantly communicating with remote, undeveloped parts of the world that have basic telephone lines, but little or no internet connectivity.

I'm not kidding. Fax is going to be around for awhile. It certainly isn't the sort of thing I deal with in my practice, but there are places in Africa, South America, and Asia where they have working phone lines and fax machines, but they don't have computers. And if they have a computer, they don't have reliable internet service--not even dial-up.

BMK

[BOB W]

I have stayed away from e fax because the fax is not password protected. Whenever I email a PDF with client info, I password protect it.

What security does E- Fax provide?

Fax machines provide privacy......

[taxea]

I doubt faxes will disappear until all the people who don't have or don't use a computer disappear.
I think it is very rude of companies to assume that every one of their clients has access to a computer.
I have clients that still have phones with actual rotary dials. I doubt they even know what a computer is.