The Grand Illusion
The good news (of sorts) is that I once again successfully managed to get our federal and state tax forms completed and filed, albeit with the assistance of tax software.
The bad news is that certain aspects of it took a lot longer because of the trend toward going “paperless.” As a writer I have a lot of varied small expenses, and a great many of them I pay by check, the remainder by credit card. My bank used to send me monthly copies of my checks. I sorted out the ones for business and filed them. Except my bank went paperless and no longer provides copies – which means I have to sort through bank statements and print out copies, except that some businesses convert the checks electronically, so that there’s no real way to get a copy of those checks. Another bank now charges $3 a month to provide a monthly paper statement for a non-interest-bearing checking account.
Add to that that because we no longer have a Staples—or any other office supply business – within 60 miles, I have to order office supplies online, and that also means that I have to print out the receipts myself.
The outfit that maintains the website bills electronically, and that means I have to print out those bills as well… and so it goes. Everywhere I look, there’s pressure to “go paperless,” which may be fine for the companies involved, but it shifts the printing costs and time to me, and I don’t see any corresponding reduction in the prices charged by the companies going paperless. I do notice, in general, that their profits are increasing.
All of this is an acceleration of a trend that likely started more than sixty years ago when gasoline “service stations” (which then used to pump the gas, clean the windows, and check the oil) transitioned to self-service stations.
More and more grocery outlets are offering self-checkout options, as is Home Depot, which are really a choice between standing in line or doing the work of a checker yourself. Some fast-food restaurants now “offer” electronic ordering or ordering through an “app.”
While companies and providers all tout the convenience and cost savings of going “paperless,” and checking yourself out, it seems to me that they’re the ones getting the majority of benefits, while the rest of us do more and more of what they used to do and pay higher prices to boot.
The other benefit to businesses going paperless is they transfer a lot of the cybersecurity risk to you.
As an old Cold Warrior I always used to dismiss complaints about capitalism. But now, more and more, I absolutely understand why.
While I’m not suggesting this will be a ‘feature’ of things like ‘self-checkout’, I recently read an article about a couple who stole >$10k worth of items from a grocery store whilst checking themselves out. They just neglected to check every item in the basket out.
One local store here in the UK (Lidl) withdrew the self checkouts after about a year. Reason: theft by shoplifters.
Apparently it is a major problem in some towns
Suggest you have a separate checking account and credit cards only for business transactions as that would eliminate the intermingling of expenses.
That is what I did when I was self-employed.
I’d still have to print out the receipts and either electronically transfer or print out the checks.
Out of curiosity, why do you need to print the receipts and checks? Unless you’re using an accountant that is grossly behind the times you can save them as PDFs and store them digitally. I haven’t printed a form or document for taxes in several years.
You just need to make sure you have a good backup/archive strategy (which I imagine you do since losing your work in progress would be pretty catastrophic).
Digging out everything electronically from different sources and converting it to PDF format just adds work. Plus, I tend to be skeptical of electronic backups of electronic files — at least where taxes are concerned. Also… I am the accountant, for better or worse. I have no problem importing compatible electronic financial data, but there’s a significant amount of expense data where it takes more effort to transfer than print out and enter manually.
I don’t understand the economics of some of these things. New Jersey (too left for my liking) requires gas stations to be full service, but the gas prices seem quite comparable to those in neighboring states that don’t. Clearly the attendants (not even expecting tips) don’t get paid a lot; but at least to the degree they do get paid, they’re not on public assistance.
Same with self-checkout, given greater shoplifting, maintenance on the equipment, etc.
I’m not even sure it’s really about profit, except as imagined in some people’s minds. I think senior managers are rather subject to management fads and to being sold things that sound good but don’t necessarily work out. Add that to a predatory self-promotion that some have, and the outcome won’t be good.
I’ve seen too many cases where these fads (which may have some validity, but that depends on people and not just going through the motions) accomplish only one thing: to pad manager resumés. Fortunately where I was could still postpone self-inflicted red tape for the duration of crisis response and accomplish quite a bit when most needed.
Companies not wanting to own employees to get the work done is not a ‘fad’. It’s been here for quite some time. It includes the big outsourcing boom in the US from more than a decade ago. It is part and parcel of US capitalism.
As one industry example (the bicycle and components industry), some of the largest vertically integrated companies (not outsourcing much at all) currently reside in the far east.
Maybe it’s a trend rather than a fad (although a variety of fads arguably are a means of expressing that trend), but often in the long term it’s not sound to overdo outsourcing, or AI, or any other attempts to replace real humans that work here rather than in some overseas call center. There is of course a constant pressure to improve efficiency, which within some realistic limits is not unreasonable, or wouldn’t be if the education system did more than it does to prepare people to do useful work.
Sometimes it does make economic sense in the long term. I’d be interested to see a close look at that. It could show the line between corporate greed vs labor greed (IMO, either can be greedy in the extreme, although I still think for some senior managers, it’s about their own personal position more than long term corporate benefit).