A better way to make electronic copies of tax documents

Despite the fact that some smart phones are very sophisticated, submitting an ordinary pic from your phone is not the best way to capture a tax document for your tax preparer. I have personally tested a free scanner app for your iPhone or Android phone that I recommend for the purposes of archiving hardcopy documents and uploading them to your tax preparer.
The app is Adobe Scan, and the basic features are free to use. You’ll download your version from the App Store or the Play Store.
When installing it, as expected, you must give it permission to use your camera and the permission can be always, or only when using the app. I recommend the latter setting.
Here’s the flow from hardcopy to an upload for your tax preparer.

1. Open the app and scan the document. Adobe Scan will attempt to crop out all background and identify the borders of the document. You can drag the borders to adjust if necessary. Save the scan.
2. Save, share or download the scan to your “local device,” meaning to your phone’s Download folder.
3. After scanning all hardcopies and downloading the files, use your phone to log in to your tax preparer’s secure portal and access your client folder.
4. Follow the portal instructions to upload the scans into your client folder within the portal.

As an aside, your tax preparer does not need any generic “instructions” that are usually printed on page 2 or the reverse of hardcopy tax documents, so you can save yourself some time and effort by ignoring those. Of course, any pages that do have unique values or your personal information on them are relevant.

Securing your personal identification and sensitive information, such as SSN and income: since you are scanning hard copies, you can take a dark marker and redact all or part of your SSN before you scan. Similarly, you can redact other information, such as birthdates, that you can easily say or tell to your preparer.

Your scans from Adobe Scan will be stored “in the cloud” on Adobe servers. So, after confirming that you have successfully uploaded them to your tax portal, you should consider deleting them from Adobe.