This year’s tax season may be wrapping up for most people, but that doesn’t necessarily mean all your related paperwork should be tossed in the shredder. Here are recommendations for how long to hang onto common documents.
Keep for Less Than a Year
- Deposit and withdrawal records, bills and receipts (until reconciled with bank statements and no longer needed for tax returns or other purposes)
Keep for a Year or More
- Pay stubs (to verify the accuracy of each year’s W-2)
- Bank and credit card statements
- Investment statements and purchase confirmations
Keep for Seven Years
- Supporting tax documents (receipts, W-2s, bank interest forms, etc.)
Keep Indefinitely
- Tax returns
- Birth and death certificates
- Marriage licenses
- Divorce decrees
- Social Security cards
- Loan documents
- Major home improvement receipts
- Vehicle titles
- Insurance policies
- Military discharge papers
- Defined-benefit plan documents
- Estate-planning documents
To cut down on the amount of paperwork you need to manage, you can check with your bank, credit card, investment and other providers to see if they offer an e-documents option. This may allow you to access digital copies of your documents from each provider’s website as needed and receive email notifications when new documents are available.
Hardcopies of important documents should be stored in a secure place, such as in a fireproof home safe or a bank safe deposit box. When hardcopies aren’t required, documents can be scanned and stored on a secure computer system, such as a password-protected and encrypted home computer with a backup service or on a web-based storage solution such as Apple iCloud, Google Drive or Dropbox.
Hardcopy and digital documents with sensitive personal information both need to be securely destroyed when discarded. Paper documents should be thoroughly shredded. Digital files on personal devices, even when conventionally deleted, may still be recoverable (such as after you sell an old computer), so they should be encrypted or securely deleted.
By adopting these good document filing habits, accessing what you need, when you need it will be easier, tidier and more secure.
Draper and Kramer Mortgage Corp. does not offer tax advice. Please contact your tax professional for any tax-related questions.
