When to Throw Away Receipts
Managing receipts is critical to tracking income, expenses, and other relevant data. Good financial documentation helps you keep your books up to date, manage cash flow efficiently and streamline the tax return process. If you are unsure whether to keep or discard receipts, here’s a comprehensive guideline for when to throw them away
Jump To:
- Understanding Receipt Types
- Receipt Retention Guidelines
- When to Throw Away Receipts
- How to Safely Dispose of Receipts
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Understanding Receipt Types
According to the IRS, you need to keep receipts as long as necessary, especially when preparing tax returns. Even if there’s no fixed timeline for when to throw away old receipts, there are general rules for keeping and discarding these financial records.
- Tax-related receipts: Three to seven years
- Employee tax records: Four years
- Miscellaneous financial records: Three years
Audits and financial reviews are some of the factors that influence retention decisions. Receipts are crucial financial records that monitor business performance and ensure better decision-making. Possible changes in tax laws require support items like receipts to ensure proper adherence to the new tax regulations.
Essential vs. Non-Essential Receipts
Essential receipts include documents you should keep for record-keeping, taxes or warranty documents. They often have personal and sensitive information that you must safeguard. Non-essential receipts are documents without personal information, such as a grocery or coffee shop receipt.
Receipt Retention Guidelines
The length of time you keep a receipt depends on the action, event or expense of the document records. According to the IRS, you must keep documents as long as required (see below) to prove deductions on tax returns or income.
Receipt Retention by Type
The typical guideline is to keep essential receipts for three years:
- Past tax returns: Keep for three years.
- Receipts: Save for three years.
- Employment tax records: Keep for four years.
- Miscellaneous financial records: Save for three years.
Factors to Consider When Deciding How Long to Keep Receipts
Along with the general receipt retention guidelines, here are some considerations when deciding how long to keep receipts:
- Business expenses: Retain business receipts needed for financial budgeting and analysis.
- Warranty and issuance documents: Secure warranty receipts until expiration or scan them for digital archive.
- Legal documents: Keep legal receipts like loans and rental contracts as advised by legal professionals.
Which Is Better — Throwing Receipts Away or Shredding Them?
While throwing away personal receipts seems easy, you need to be wary of those containing personal information. Improper receipt disposal can expose sensitive financial information, and identity theft is one of the significant consequences of casually throwing receipts in the trash bin.
Industries that benefit from shredding receipts include banks, financial institutions, hospitals, legal firms, government agencies and scanning companies.
Ensure safe, secure disposal of receipts and other financial documents through shredding. Partnering with a trusted shredding company minimizes risk and legal obligations.
Choose shredding as a secure disposal strategy for old financial records, such as:
- Airline tickets
- Delivery receipts
- Receipts with personal signatures
- Bank statements and ATM receipts
- Credit card receipts and statements
- Receipts with Social Security numbers
- Medical receipts with personal information
- Store receipts with loyalty program number
Best Practices for Organizing Financial Documents and Discarding Receipts
Keep personal information and financial records confidential. Classifying receipt types or securing financial documents in one place can help avoid common pitfalls like data breaches and identity theft.
- Categorize receipts: Maintain an organized system by classifying financial records by type and date.
- Gather receipts in one place: Keep receipts in a single, secure location for easy safekeeping.
- Securely shred documents: Ensure all documents and financial records remain safe while in storage, and are shredded before disposal.
Dispose of Receipts Safely and Effectively
Engage with professional shredding companies like TrueShred to protect personal and business receipts. As your trusted partner for secure document destruction, our company offers on-site and off-site shredding services to meet your requirements. Choose between one-time or ongoing shredding procedures, depending on the nature of receipt accumulation.
One-time services are suitable for businesses and individuals with a stockpile of receipts and other financial documents they want to discard at the end of a retention period. Ongoing shredding services are the best choice for industries with highly sensitive information, like medical and banking institutions. Our highly trained, professional team provides locked consoles across your facility, which serve as the safekeeping container for receipts, personal files and other essential documents that need to be shredded.
Declutter Receipts and Other Confidential Documents With TrueShred
Contact us today or request pricing for our shredding services. If you’re a recurring customer, you may send your service request here. At TrueShred, we visit your business via a mobile truck at a scheduled date and time. Choose to securely shred and destroy your documents on a one-time basis, or weekly, bi-weekly or monthly shredding plans are also available
Request a quote today.
”I have worked with several document destruction companies over the past ten years and until contracting with TrueShred, I hadn’t met a company with which I felt so compelled to share with professional colleagues. TrueShred’s personnel are always polite, considerate, timely and attentive. . . I trust all of my future shredding needs to TrueShred!”
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