Protect Your Small Business Tax Data from Theft

Hiring an accountant to prepare your business taxes is a wise move for small business owners.  Having a certified public accountant review and report on your finances is a great way to leverage the training and experience of an expert to help optimize your finances.

I’ve found that working with your accountant is like most other business projects, it’s an iterative process.  You give them your 1099’s, profit & loss statements, and other financial documents; they look them over and come back with questions and requests for more information.

The cool thing about modern technology is that you don’t actually have to meet with your accountant each time they need more information or to discuss something further.  Of course, since you’re sending sensitive financial information you don’t want to just email your documents to your accountant.  You need to find a secure way to protect your tax data from theft.

My first attempt at securing additional tax forms was to zip them up with WinZip and encrypt the files with a password.  This wasn’t the best solution for two reasons.  Anyone that was persistent enough could run a password cracking program on the zip file if they intercepted the tax data.  The second reason I’d advise against this is that my accountant was unable to open the zip file due to how his version of Winzip handled the security.

I was pleased to discover a service called Send This File that allows you to send data in a secure fashion and has a wide range of plans for businesses of various sizes.  We used Send This File to exchange documents securely and never had to meet in person throughout the process.