Comment by jaycroft
4 years ago
As an HR administrator for a small business, this absolutely grinds my gears. According to every accountant and consultant I've ever talked to, the "wet signature" rule is enshrined in federal law (although I have yet to be able to find out exactly where). It applies to all brokerage operations (opening your custodial accounts); employee applications (even internal to your own company that never leave your own filing cabinet - keep in case of audit!); statements of information (form 5500) filed with the IRS (it's the only form you can't submit electronically - needs a wet signature?!). For everything else we deal with a saved drop-in signature in Acrobat works just fine. Almost not worth the employee's savings given their low participation rate and general ambivalence to the whole program.
Not sure if it's new, but I just recently filed a 5500 online. You can do it here: https://www.efast.dol.gov/welcome.html
But yes, dealing with brokerage forms that needed a wet signature faxed..
My mistake on the 5500 - we have a consultant / tax preparer that files the actual form for us, so it does look like the actual filing is electronic. What I was incorrectly remembering, it turns out, was that the authorization form for our consultant to electronically file needed a wet signature.