Author Topic: Best Practices for Saving Tax Returns and Supporting Documents  (Read 1232 times)

Swat

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As tax season is here, I was just wondering what the best practices are for storing/saving the tax documents. I know there are different posts online about how long you should be saving the documents (with some variability in those recommendations), but was curious what most people do on this forum. Some specific questions/categories:

-Actual tax returns: probably the most important forms. I'm assuming save the hard copies of course in a file cabinet (and the accountants may save their own copy) but are people keeping a digital copy as well. If so, how are they filing and subsequently protecting the file. For instance, is the file password protected, did you redact/remove SS# at the top, are you only keeping it locally on your computer vs in a dedicated password protection app such as 1Password or LastPass where there only service is dedicated to protection.

-Supporting documents (statements from financial institutions, HSA's, etc...): how long do people keep these forms and if so, do they even keep the saved document when they can easily be accessed on the financial sites such as Vanguard, Fidelity, Ally, etc...

-Receipts: direct business receipts, purchase price of items (for later depreciation considerations). My thoughts would be that these would be the easiest to scan and file without concerns for privacy as their usually is no important information on a regular receipt.

Thanks. 

boarder42

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Re: Best Practices for Saving Tax Returns and Supporting Documents
« Reply #1 on: March 20, 2018, 09:40:28 AM »
I take pictures of everything and save the PDF of the final copy on google drive for each year.  i throw the paper copies in a blackhole of a file cabinet incase i lose the google drive stuff.

jlcnuke

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Re: Best Practices for Saving Tax Returns and Supporting Documents
« Reply #2 on: March 20, 2018, 09:42:28 AM »
I take pictures of everything and save the PDF of the final copy on google drive for each year.  i throw the paper copies in a blackhole of a file cabinet incase i lose the google drive stuff.

+1. I keep 7 years of paper copies in my safe, electronic copies of everything on my google drive.