The court properly denied plaintiffs motion for a protective order, since plaintiff failed to show that there was anything un-reasonable or improper about defendants' demands for its tax returns ( see Pyfrom v Tishman Constr. Co. of N.Y., 270 AD2d 24; Gitlin v Chirinkin, 71 AD3d 728).
Under these circumstances, directing plaintiff to produce documents in electronic form may be an appropriate response to defendants' argument that they have insufficient office space in which to review voluminous papers, but requiring plaintiff to bear the cost of the production imposes an undue burden on it, since, generally, the cost of production is borne by the party requesting the production, and the cost of creating electronic documents here would not have been inconsequential ( see Waltzer v Tradescape Co., L.L.C., 31 AD3d 302, 304).