"I would definitely be opposed to this," says Paul Kierce, president and chief financial officer with Wilmington, Mass.-based ATC Technologies, a developer of medical devices. "If you want us to file electronically, that's fine. Then provide a format to enter the information and send it electronically." Providing extra information "lends itself to questions about who, what, when, where and why," he says. And, for one thing, answering them consumes time few small business people can afford.

To be sure, no one is suggesting that businesses withhold or doctor their files in an effort to cheat Uncle Sam. "We don't want to defend people who are breaking the law," Coratolo says. "But, we don't want to subject small businesses to having to go back years and years, and open up their information as a fishing expedition."

Then, there's the question of just how vulnerable the information is to being mishandled. "The more information you turn over, the more potential that mistakes could be made," points out Bill Rys, tax counsel with the National Federation of Independent Businesses.

In March 2011 , noting that "because the small business taxpayer often maintains his own accounting software file and is not a trained bookkeeper or accountant, the data in the software file is not necessarily directly relevant to the IRS examination." As a result, the "AICPA believes the taxpayer should have the right to redact the software file and turn over only the data that is responsive and relevant to the examination."