Income Tax Records: How Long Should You Keep Them?

It’s more complicated than you might think. There are numerous factors involved.

Maybe you’re on one end or the other of the how-long-do-I-keep-my-income-tax-returns spectrum. You might keep them until you file the next year and then shred them. Or you might have boxes of old tax returns stored in a basement closet. Just in case, you might think.

What the IRS recommends is somewhere in the middle. And there’s not a simple, one-size-fits-all rule. According to the IRS, the length of time you should keep a document depends on the action, expense, or event that the document records.