Tim Flight

There has got to be a better way to deliver secure documents to people. Today I received a 1099-MISC form in the mail. The window on the envelope which is supposed to display your name and address also displayed my tax ID number. But even that slip didn’t really matter because the envelope wasn’t sealed.

I’m not suggesting I don’t trust US Postal employees. There are a number of ways this process could be improved. For example one of my banks sends me an email telling me my tax forms are ready. I log into their secure website and download them. That is a good, secure process.

Here is my wish list, but I doubt anyone that could make a difference is listening. There are a few seemingly simple things that could improve the process of mailing tax forms.

• The 1099-MISC form itself is flawed. The tax ID number is too close to the name and risks being exposed in windowed envelopes. Other tax forms have the same flaw.
• Don’t label the envelope with “IMPORTANT TAX DOCUMENT ENCLOSED” That just screams “easy identity theft”.
• If you are an employer, please seal the envelope. Seems simple, but apparently not. And to those Devil’s advocates out there it wasn’t that it had become unstuck…. this was one of those “peel the strip to expose the sticky stuff” envelopes that the “peel” step had not been performed.
• Step up into the 21^st century and offer people secure, digital downloads of their tax documents like my bank does. It isn’t too hard to perform a PDF merge and offer the document over SSL. Sure a Mom & Pop company might not want to take that step… but it is so easy they could.

This entry was posted on Monday, January 30th, 2006 at 4:47 pm and is filed under General, Misc. You can subscribe via RSS 2.0 feed to this post's comments. Both comments and pings are currently closed.