The Green Movement is gaining momentum in the tax and accounting profession. For firms that are going green, eco-friendly initiatives are taking place at the process level. With a focus on reducing the use of paper, accounting professionals are implementing technology innovations like scanning and client portals to “digitize” workflows that traditionally relied on volumes of paper. And of course reducing the use of paper is not only good for the environment, but it significantly reduces costs associated with paper and manual tasks.

Many firms have adapted their tax process to significantly reduce the use of paper while increasing productivity. Front-end scanning, scan and organize solutions, and integrated tax preparation software have redefined the tax process from paper-heavy to nearly paper-free. By scanning up-front, firms create an electronic copy of client source documents—eliminating the need to burn through reams of paper photocopying files. Scan and organize solutions automatically organize scanned client documents and deliver them in a bookmarked PDF file that makes it easy to prepare and review returns. Further supporting a green process, these solutions can also extract data from scanned tax documents and seamlessly import data into tax preparation software to auto-populate the return. These tools give firms the ability to prepare, review and file returns while virtually eliminating paper from the process—helping firms go green.

To put some scale on the potential benefits of going green during tax season, take a look at some statistics on waste.

• By the end of the calendar year 2008, the IRS reported that 156 million individual returns had been filed for the 2007 Tax Year and 66 million of those returns were filed on paper. Between making copies of source documents and finalized returns, let’s assume that on average 50 pages of paper were used for each return. The paper used to prepare those 66 million returns represents 400,000 trees. Even if we assume that 50 percent recycled paper was used, those 66 million returns represent 200,000 trees.
  http://www.conservatree.com/learn/EnviroIssues/TreeStats.shtml
  
• The National Energy Education Development Project estimates that the total energy used to produce one ream of paper is equivalent to 2 gallons of fuel. Then manufacturing the paper used to prepare 66 million paper returns with 50 percent recycled paper would consume energy equivalent to 6.6 million gallons of fuel.
  http://www.need.org/needpdf/infobook_activities/IntInfo/ConsI.pdf
  
• A scanner consumes significantly less energy than a photocopier resulting in lower green house gases. Over 8 weeks of tax season, a scanner consumes approximately 9 Kilo Watt hours (KWh) of electricity. A copier with similar speed will consume 186 KWh of electricity. The EPA estimates that generating 1 KWh of electricity produces 1.5 lbs of carbon dioxide also known as green house gases emissions. So each firm using a scanner instead of copier could save 280 lbs in green house gases, just during tax season.
  http://www.epa.gov/cleanenergy/energy-resources/calculator.html
  
• Consider the millions of copier toner cartridges that wind up in landfills every year. A typical toner cartridge weighs about three pounds. The cartridge is composed of 40% plastic and 40% metal. The plastic is engineering-grade polymers that take at least 1000 years to decompose. And a single new toner cartridge consumes approximately 3 quarts of oil in producing that cartridge.
  http://www.stopwaste.org/docs/toner.pdf

For more information on how to reduce the use of paper in your firm, visit our website at Copanion.com and access one of many white papers or webcasts on the subject.