Cleaning out the office today and have stacks of boxes going back a decade an a half. So I was wondering, ‘How long do I have to hang onto this stuff?’ So I Googled the question and found this site:
http://www.bankrate.com/brm/itax/edit/news/stories/news_071900a.asp
And this IRS Publication:
http://www.irs.gov/pub/irs-pdf/p552.pdf
Edited 3/22/2008 2:50 pm ET by 802Mike
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I believe its seven yearrs for IRS purposes.
My memory was that for basic stuff it is 3 yrs, but seven if they find anything wrong which gives them leeway to go back further. Some corporate stuff for ten years, and if you deduct any costs for use of your home in business it is until you sell the house and three years after that.
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Unless you have a really complicated return, tax forms for one year will fit in a manilla envelope. No reason to not keep tax forms essentially forever.
It's all the other records -- invoices, receipts, bills, estimates, correspondence, etc -- that you need to ride herd on.