15 questions about sending a fax

• How do I send a fax from my iPhone?

  No app. Photograph or scan the pages in Notes, upload them in Safari, and check the preview — which is where a desk shadow shows up as a black band while it still costs nothing.

• How do I send a fax from an Android phone?

  No app. The print dialog turns anything on the phone into a PDF, and Drive's scanner turns paper into one.

• How do I send a fax from my computer?

  A browser is the whole requirement. No modem, no phone line, no driver — and why Windows Fax and Scan looks like it should work and does not.

• Can I send a fax from Gmail?

  Gmail cannot send a fax, and nothing added to it can. What email-to-fax services do with your document instead, and what to do about a message you need faxed.

• How do I fax a PDF?

  What a PDF becomes on the way to a fax machine: 1728 × 2156 pixels, one bit each. What survives that, and what disappears.

• How do I send a fax without a subscription?

  One fax, one price, charged once, no account to close afterwards — and why almost every other fax service is sold as a plan.

• How do I fax something without a fax machine?

  A fax machine did three jobs and only one of them still has to happen. What the shop, the all-in-one printer and the phone in your hand each cost you, and why none of them is a drive.

• What does a fax confirmation actually prove?

  That the receiving fax system answered and acknowledged the pages. Not that a person read them, and not that anything was accepted or filed.

• Why did my fax fail?

  Every reason a transmission ends, which of them are retried and which are terminal on sight, and what happens to the money.

• Do I need a fax cover sheet, and what goes on it?

  Five fields do the whole job, and one of them is the only check anyone at the receiving end has against a partial transmission.

• How do I send a test fax to check that a line works?

  One page, at no charge, to a number you enter — carrying legibility and resolution targets, so it answers whether the fax arrived readable rather than only whether it arrived.

• What number can I send a test fax to?

  A number to fax from your own machine, so you can see what actually arrived — the page count, how long the call took, and whether the transmission finished.

• What has to be on a HIPAA release form, and where does it go?

  There is no form to download, because the rule defines a valid authorization by what the document contains. The six things it has to say, the five conditions that make one invalid, and why your own records are a different request.

• Can I fax from my email?

  Plain email cannot reach a fax number; gateways bridge it with an account. Here is the no-account route: save the attachment, upload it, send.

• Where can I fax something?

  Which counters still keep a working machine is a per-store fact, not a per-chain one, which is why the lists send people on wasted trips. The three questions that settle it in one call.

The product behind every one of these pages does one thing: it sends one fax to one US fax number. There is no account, no app to install, and nothing to cancel afterwards.

• —Up to 30 pages in one transmission, however many files they came from
• —You see the converted pages before you pay, exactly as they will be transmitted
• —Your card is authorized when you press send and charged only once the receiving fax system acknowledges the pages
• —Your documents are deleted 24 hours after the transmission completes

These pages answer that, for one agency: IRS fax numbers, by form — which forms the IRS accepts by fax, which it does not, and the number for each, every one read off the IRS page that publishes it with the date it was read. The forms with more to say than a row can hold have a page each, among them where to fax Form 2553, where a filing deadline governs everything, and Form SS-4, where the IRS faxes the EIN back to you.

There is no second agency, and that is a deliberate limit rather than a gap waiting to be filled. A number that has been reassigned since somebody wrote it down still produces a confirmed transmission — to whoever holds it now — so a destination only gets published here if we can point at the agency’s own page for it and date the reading. For everything else, the organization that asked you for the document is the authority on where it goes, and the number on their letter or their form instructions is the one to use.

They also do not tell you whether faxing a particular document satisfies a particular requirement. A confirmed transmission record is evidence that the receiving system acknowledged your pages at a specific time; what that is worth to a given agency is that agency’s rule, not ours. What confirmation proves sets out the boundary precisely.