Off-Topic: Online fax services

[kpangelinan]

They ask, sometimes at least. It's come up from several people in these sorts of discussions on the forums before. My guess is if you lie to the IRS they'll fax to it though.

Who said anything about lying. I guess if they don't want to do it and you lie to them sure. But I've been efaxing for over 10 years and I probably fax to the IRS and receive from the IRS 500-1000 pages a month (about 50/50 on sending/receiving) and in over a DECADE, I HAVE NOT HAD ONE SINGLE revenue officer, local and at the regional service centers, OIC offices, POA centers, etc. ask me if I am using an efax.

me and sometimes don't ask me. One agent who wouldn't work with an email fax service had no problem with the idea of me calling in from a cell phone in a Fed Ex Kinkoes to arrange a fax direct to an agent with whom it was contemplated that I would close the deal. I get the impression that the agents go by what they think the rules are without feeling authorized to use common sense or their own judgement. I also get the impression that in this regard they disagree on what the rule exactly is.

Agreed.

i have been using MY Fax for a couple of years. Works great albeit a bit slow. However sometime last year the IRS stopped sending it through. I do not know ow they IRS machine knows but evidently it does. Had to buy new standalone to receive IRS fax. I have used K7 before to receive faxes but if you do not use it in a 30 day period you lose the number. Gave up on it after the 2nd time in 5 or 6 years. Yesterday had Practitioners Hot line tell me they could not fax to me unless I was on pone. Se had tried to fax something and I am down to one phone line. I said fine just mail it. As soon as I hung up the fax started receiving. I have more questions than answers now. Gov't bureaucracy and technology. I guess I have outlived my ability to comprehend.

I don't understand this either....how does a machine know if it's an efax or not? Seems silly.....this is what I think is happening:

I think if you get some kind of free efax or total efax solutions (voice message center, fax, etc.) the message from the other end (here it would be the IRS) comes across their fax machines and they have to go through some sort of "push 1 for a fax", "push 2 for a voice mail", etc, etc. But from my research of efaxes, the dedicated, paid for, efax lines are no different than a normal telephone fax line, meaning the sender receives that fax tone when they fax and there is no message and such. I believe this is why they won't do it. Heck if I kept getting a fax message requiring me to do a bunch of work, I wouldn't do it either. Don't you just want to punch in the fax number and walk away?

Anyways....if there was a problem with efaxing, with as much as we do local, regional and national out of my office, one would think I would have come across it at least ONCE!

Until I come across a problem, in which I'll handle that problem at that time, I think I'll continue efaxing successfully in my practice, or until I see some sore of ruling or legislation against the use of it.

Hope this helps someone looking into it.

[taxxcpa]

Fax

I use an e-mail fax service for incoming faxes.
If I need to send a fax, I use a regular fax, plug it into my regular telephone line, send the fax, then disconnect the fax from the phone line.

I receive a lot more faxes than I send. Almost all clients can receive a scanned document sent by e-mail, but a lot of them don't have a scanner, so they have to use a fax. If they don't have a fax they go to Kinkos.

[David1980]

I think if you get some kind of free efax or total efax solutions (voice message center, fax, etc.) the message from the other end (here it would be the IRS) comes across their fax machines and they have to go through some sort of "push 1 for a fax", "push 2 for a voice mail", etc, etc. But from my research of efaxes, the dedicated, paid for, efax lines are no different than a normal telephone fax line, meaning the sender receives that fax tone when they fax and there is no message and such.

I don't think a free efax service could exist where you have to "push 1 for a fax" - since the way everyone faxes is they put paper in a machine and plug in a fax number and let the fax machine do it's thing. If you added a phone menu tree to the number it'd ... just not work.

[DTS]

This further discussion has been most helpful to me. I will have time this weekend to check all this out and make my decision.

Thank you all very much.

D

[erchess]

Privacy

The issue with those agents who have an issue with efax is whether I can be sure no one except me and my employees if I had any might see what is faxed or even take it from me or make copies. Apparently there exist one or more regulations requiring that they only fax to secure locations and defining what counts as secure.