cost of "fetchItem" in a server side followup acti

In client side use of the Java api, I don't automatically call "fetchItem" when I have an IItemHandle since there's a cost of a "trip to the server"...for example if I just want to copy the target iteration of one work item to another, I can just use the handle without resolving the item itself. I only fetch the item and cast it when I actually need to call methods on the item not available on the handle.

Is there a similar cost for server side programming? Why I want to do this is a bit of a long story, but is there much cost to always resolving items when I call methods that get a handle?