How Long Should You Keep Your Receipts?

Everyone knows that it’s important to keep receipts to track important expenses, but as your junk drawer gets stuffed with more and more of them, you might wonder when it’s okay to just toss them into the recycling bin. How long should you keep your receipts? It depends on what you’ll need them for.

How Long To Keep Receipts When Claiming Expenses On Your Taxes

Naturally, you’ll need to know how much you spent and where when you’re claiming expenses on your taxes. If you take the standard deduction, you could be missing out on a lot of tax savings. It won’t be possible to claim those savings if you don’t keep your receipts.

After you file your taxes in April, you’ll be able to get rid of your receipts that show expenses made in the previous year. Any important purchases made after January 1st, you’ll need to keep for the next tax season.

Other Reasons To Keep Receipts

Many purchases are eligible for refund or exchange from 15 to 30 days after purchase. You’ll need to keep the receipt in most cases. You may also need the receipt to register your purchase.

Fighting Receipt Overwhelm

Receipts often fade over time. The information can fade with exposure to the sun, or the ink or carbon can smudge if your receipts are kept in a disorganized space, rubbing up against other documents.

You no longer need to depend on paper receipts to keep track of your purchases. In fact, this is the best way to miss out on tax deductions. Even if you keep your receipts in a filing cabinet, you’ll find that they will get folded and misplaced over time.

Many retailers allow you to sign up for paperless receipts, and will instead send the receipt to your email inbox. You can keep these emails in a designated file, or give them a distinct label.

For other purchases, you’ll need to scan your receipts into an electronic document. You can use a scanner, though you might not always remember to go on your desktop computer to scan and save the file.

You can also use your smart phone to take a picture of the receipt and save the information on an app. Make sure the information is backed up onto a cloud server, or has some way of syncing with your computer in case you need to access the data from another device, or your phone is lost or stolen.