Early this year, the IRS created a set of rules for electronic signatures used for the 4506-T form and 4506T-EZ form through their Income Verification Express Services (IVES). This is a big step because these forms were the last disclosure forms that couldn’t be electronically signed.
If you don’t care to sort through the document, here’s our summary of their requirements:
IVES requires that you can prove the identity of each signer. After all, what good is a signature if you don’t know who’s behind it? Here at SIGNiX, we offer many different identity authentication options. Most of our clients getting highly regulated documents signed pick two or more of these options (a method known as multifactor authentication):
The IRS also requires that signers consent to receive and sign documents electronically before they view or sign documents. We have a customizable consent page, which you can edit to fit your unique compliance needs.
The IRS requires that each signed document be protected from tampering. We offer a feature called "tamper evidence," which makes it easy to see if someone has tampered with your documents. If a fraudster changes any part of the signed document, you will be alerted to the tampering when you open the document in any PDF reader.
We’ve actually taken it a step further. Our documents are tamper-evident not just at the end of the signing process, but from the second you start the transaction. This gives you evidence that the document wasn't changed between signing events. We can even show you what the document looked like at each point in the signing process with our exclusive Signature History technology.
The IRS also requires that electronic signature vendors trace an audit log of the signing process, and this information must be associated with the document for non-repudiation. The audit log must include:
At SIGNiX, our Total AuditTM provides all of those details, and also includes the following information:
Finally, the IRS requires that IVES participants retain the audit log and the 4506-T form or 4506T-EZ form for at least 2 years. With our Vendor FreedomTM technology, each signature is embedded into the signed documents, and audit trails remain available in a variety of formats, including PDF and XML.
IVES participants don’t even need to be our customers (or even be connected to the Internet) to verify their documents. Every signature, tamper-evident seal and audit trail can all be accessed by opening the document using any PDF reader software.