Pamela Reeves Start billing them for the time.. 3min x ?...

I call or respond sternly that the IRS and my WISP does not allow the receipt or transmission of sensitive documents via email or text. Short creating an email rule to bounce their email if it has an attachment... I'm almost there.

See IRS Hard and Fast rules that this is a super big no-no and expressly prohibited. Send this to the client, Explain to the client that you cannot, AND WILL NOT, accept unencrypted sensitive documents (and they're all sensitive) via email. https://www.irs.gov/help/sending-and-receiving-emails-securely

I fire clients over this if they repeatedly, after telling them (and forwarding the above IRS link or printed PDF) continue to text or email docs.

This is probably the reason why my Cyber Insurance costs more than my Tax Preparation and CFO/Management Consulting policies combined. You do have Cyber Insurance, right? Mines costs about $90/m from Hiscox.

My last email to a client that doesn't listen.. (one step away from getting fired)

First, and most importantly. You MUST not send sensitive unsecure documents via email. You MUST use our secure portal each and every time. It is a matter of simply tapping the icon on your phone, or link on our website, or bookmark and uploading to a folder or chat message.

Sending unencrypted documents via email not only violates IRS regulations for IRS Practitioners but it also exposes your personal information to potential hackers on your side and ours. We use high level encryption VPNs on all of our computers, but I'm not sure if you are doing the same.

Unencrypted documents via email also increases the cost of our Cyber insurance when our annual audit discloses the number of unsecured client emails containing social security numbers, bank routing, numbers, birthdates, etc. sent or received during the course of the year. My IT admins are recommending I implement blocking rules for all client emails with attachments, which would considerably hinder our communications. They are also suggesting I turn of MMS to block texts on our phones (attachments) as this has recently become another issues recently.

Please always use our portal, and ONLY our portal to send us unencrypted documents.

Theban Tonnesen, EA, LTCThank you for your reply. My clients are retailers and we are doing their accounting. The reports are from POS and are not particularly sensitive as they are just sales data reports. The POS systems will auto-email reports. So I am receiving hundreds of emails. My clients save time. 🤷🏻‍♀️ I do like your idea of charging them for handling those emails, just wish I did not have to.