How long to keep receipts

The IRS periods, in one table

From How long should I keep records?. Topic 305 says the same thing in shorter form. Keep records that support an item of income, deduction, or credit until the period of limitations for that return runs out.

Returns filed before the due date are generally treated as filed on the due date. Topic 305 also notes a six-year period when unreported income is attributable to foreign financial assets and is more than $5,000.

What the IRS actually requires

Not a particular app, and not a particular folder name. Publication 583 (12/2024): “Except in a few cases, the law does not require any specific kind of records. You can choose any recordkeeping system suited to your business that clearly shows your income and expenses.”

Supporting documents, in that publication’s list: sales slips, paid bills, invoices, receipts, deposit slips, canceled checks. Keep the ones that show who you paid, the date, the amount, and what it was for. Keep copies of the filed returns too.

A spreadsheet of those numbers is useful. It is not the receipt.

How long for taxes if you’re self-employed

Same table. Schedule C is still a tax return. Three years is the ordinary public rule. Six if a chunk of gross income never made it onto the form. The shoebox of meals, gas, software, and a county property-tax PDF is the support for those lines.

Photograph the thermal the day you get it. By April it is often a grey smudge. One pile: phone photos, emailed PDFs, paper. One spreadsheet: date, vendor, total, category. That is what the accountant can use. They do not want IMG_4812.JPG × 200. Tax receipts in a spreadsheet is the Schedule C page. How to organize receipts for taxes is the pile.

How long for a business

Income, deductions, and credits follow the three / six / seven / indefinite table above. If you have employees, employment-tax records are at least four years after the later of the date the tax becomes due or the date it is paid. Publication 583 points at Publication 15 for the employment-tax detail.

Assets are longer than the year you bought them. Keep the purchase records until the period of limitations expires for the year you dispose of the property in a taxable disposition — so you can figure basis, depreciation, and gain or loss. If you received property in a nontaxable exchange, keep the old property’s records as well as the new, until that later year.

Publication 583 also says to keep records longer when insurers or creditors require it. That is not an IRS number. It is whoever wrote the policy or the loan.

After an audit

The IRS pages above do not give a second clock that starts when an examination closes. The clock is still the period of limitations for that return. If you agreed to extend that period so they could finish the exam, keep the records until the extended date.

Do not take “they already looked at 2023” as permission to shred 2023 next week. Ask the person who handled the exam what they still need in the file.

Warranties are a different pile

Tax retention does not tell you when you can throw away a blender receipt. The FTC warranty page says: save a copy of the warranty, and save your product receipt with it. The receipt proves the date you bought the product and that you are the original owner.

Keep both until the written warranty term is over, and until any open claim is done. The length is on the warranty, not on an IRS table.

Digital copies vs paper

Publication 583: if you use a computerized system, you must be able to produce sufficient legible records to support the entries on the return. The same publication says all requirements that apply to hard-copy books and records also apply to electronic storage systems.

Revenue Procedure 97-22 is the IRS procedure for imaging paper onto electronic media. The system has to transfer the records completely and accurately, and index, store, preserve, retrieve, and reproduce them. You may destroy the original paper after you have tested that the electronic copies actually reproduce in compliance with that procedure, and after you have procedures to keep complying. If you cannot open the file, the IRS treats it as destroyed.

A phone photo of the full slip — vendor, date, total, line items if they matter — is the usual stand-in for a thermal that will fade. A row in Excel is not. Keep the photos in a folder named for the year, for as long as the table says.

Faded receipts

Thermal paper is designed to go blank. The IRS wants the support for the number, not a grey rectangle. Photograph it the day you get it. If it already faded and you still know the total, type the amount. Keep the photo. You cannot reconstruct a slip you never shot.

Expenses under $75

Publication 463 (travel, gift, and car expenses): you generally need documentary evidence — receipts, canceled checks, or bills. Exception: documentary evidence isn’t needed if the expense, other than lodging, is less than $75. You still record the date, place, amount, business purpose, and who was there. Lodging still needs a receipt.

That exception is not a rule that every receipt under $75 can go in the trash. It is a substantiation rule for those categories. When the slip is in your hand, photographing it is cheaper than arguing later.

States, insurers, and everyone else

The numbers on this page are federal, from the IRS. State tax agencies set their own. Some want records longer. That is not on the IRS pages linked above, so it is not in the table. Ask the person who files the state return.

What to do this week, not in April

Shoot the slip before it fades. Drop the year’s pile when you have an afternoon. Type a total if the photo is muddy. Export Excel. Keep the photos in a folder named for the year for as long as your accountant says. Files stay on your computer. Nothing uploaded.

DropSheet reads the photos in the browser and writes the columns. It does not e-file, and it does not tell you when to shred.