Today I left work early to get all my tax stuff together. I’m the kind of guy who has to dig through closets and sort through piles of paper strewn on the floor to find everything needed. Taxes drive me crazy enough; I shouldn’t be making it harder on myself.
Yes, my physical world lacks organization. But my electronic world is immaculate. You want a copy of that email about that thing we saw at that place some time back? No problem, I’ll have it to you in ten seconds. You want a copy of my W2 from 2006? Too freakin’ bad.
So I’m going paperless. I just made this decision about five minutes ago as I pulled an old document out from under a rusty hammer in the closet we keep all our tools in. How did it get there any way?
Any way. Aside from a computer, a scanner, and a good backup system I’m not sure what’s involved in becoming completely paperless. Though I have a good backup system at home (a 1TB Buffalo Network Drive) it may be time to get off-site backups. In addition to that, I have to consider searchability of the documents I store – I hope OCR technology has improved a lot since I last used it.
I still haven’t found everything I need to file my taxes, but I ‘m close. I’m just a few calls/faxes away.
