Ok guys, now it happened to me as well: A client is going paperless with stuff like invoicing and such. This brings up a couple of questions and since many of you are consultants as well I guess this is a good NG for that topic:
a. Digital signatures: I think Jim T. already does that. No big deal to get a signature onto a PDF but what are the ramifications in terms of legality and safety? After all, email is not exactly a safe transport vehicle.
b. Document retention: Are there any "cast-in-concrete" rules over what constitutes proper records after they are scanned in? Can you really, really toss the paper copy afterwards? I could not find much via Google and the IRS site is surprisingly silent about it. I had hoped to find file formats accepted by them, compression ratios, resolution settings and so on. Tried our state tax board (California FTB) as well, found nothing worthwhile on that topic.