How Long to Keep Business Records: Receipts, Payroll and Job Files

“How long do I keep receipts and job files?” The honest answer is that there is no single number. The IRS has four of them, payroll and hiring records have their own clocks, and a job file should outlive the time a customer could sue you over the work, which your state sets. Here is each clock, what starts it, and a filing habit that lets you throw things out on schedule instead of keeping every shoebox forever.

If you have not yet split business money from personal money, start with Separate Business and Personal Money, which also lists the documents that back up your income and expenses. This article is about how long to keep them.

Why the IRS says three years

The IRS ties its periods to the period of limitations, which it defines as “the period of time in which you can amend your tax return to claim a credit or refund, or the IRS can assess additional tax.” Once that window closes for a year, the records that support that year’s return have done their tax job. One detail moves the start: “Returns filed before the due date are treated as filed on the due date.” Say your return was due April 15, 2026 and you filed in February. The three years run from April 15, 2026, so that year’s receipts are kept into April 2029, not February.

The IRS’s table of periods is reproduced in Separate Business and Personal Money, linked above: three years in the usual case, at least four for employment tax records, six if you leave out income worth more than 25% of the gross income on the return, seven for a bad debt deduction or a loss from worthless securities, and no limit if you file a fraudulent return or none. One row it leaves out: if you file a claim for a credit or refund after filing your return, keep the records 3 years from filing or 2 years from paying the tax, whichever is later.

The seven-year line catches some contractors by surprise, because an unpaid invoice feels like a bad debt. The IRS says a cash method taxpayer “generally can’t take a bad debt deduction for unpaid salaries, wages, rents, fees” and similar items, and that a business bad debt can be deducted only if the amount owed was included in gross income in the current or a prior year. If your accountant does deduct a bad debt, keep that year’s records, and the paper on the debt, for seven years. Keep copies of the filed returns themselves too; the IRS notes they help with future returns and with any amended return.

The truck, the trailer and the big tools

Records for property you own run on a different clock. Publication 583 says to keep them “until the period of limitations expires for the year in which you dispose of the property in a taxable disposition.” It lists what those records should show: when and how you got the asset, the purchase price and the cost of improvements, any section 179 deduction and the depreciation taken, how you used it, and when and how you disposed of it and for what.

Say you bought a dump trailer in 2022, deducted it under section 179, and sell it in 2027. The 2027 return is due in 2028, so the usual three years run into 2031. The 2022 purchase invoice stays in the file until then, nine years after you bought it. How the deduction itself works is in Writing Off the Truck.

Payroll and hiring records

Once you have employees, several agencies set periods, and each one counts from a different event:

• Employment taxes (IRS). Publication 15 says to keep all employment tax records for at least 4 years. The list includes your EIN, the amounts and dates of all wage payments, each employee’s name, address, Social Security number and occupation, dates of employment, the Forms W-4, the dates and amounts of tax deposits, copies of the returns you filed, and records of fringe benefits and expense reimbursements.
• Wage and hour (Department of Labor). Payroll records are kept for at least three years from the last date of entry (29 CFR 516.5). The records your pay is worked out from, such as time cards, wage rate tables, work schedules, and additions to or deductions from wages, are kept for two years (29 CFR 516.6; Fact Sheet #21).
• Form I-9. USCIS says you must keep each employee’s I-9 for three years after the date of hire, or one year after employment ends, whichever is later. I-9 and E-Verify works the dates through for a short-stay helper and a long-serving foreman.
• Personnel files (EEOC). EEOC regulations require employers covered by the federal anti-discrimination laws to keep all personnel or employment records for one year, and an involuntarily terminated employee’s records for one year from the termination. Most of those laws reach businesses with 15 or more employees (20 for age), but the EEOC says virtually all employers are covered by the Equal Pay Act, under which payroll records are kept at least three years and records that explain different pay rates at least two. If a charge is filed, keep everything related until the charge and any lawsuit are finally resolved.
• Injury logs (OSHA). If your business must keep OSHA injury records, the 300 Log, the annual summary and the 301 incident reports are saved for five years after the end of the calendar year they cover (29 CFR 1904.33). Who has to keep them is in OSHA Recordkeeping and Injury Reporting for Small Crews.

The simplest rule that covers all of these: keep the payroll year for at least four years after its taxes were due or paid, and give each I-9 and each injury log its own “keep until” date, because those can run longer.

Job files, contracts and warranties

No general federal rule says how long to keep a signed contract, the change orders, the permit and inspection sign-offs, the photos and the warranty you gave. The practical answer is: as long as a customer could bring a claim over the work, plus any warranty period you promised. That window is state law, and it varies a lot. Two examples:

• Florida gives five years for an action on a written contract (Fla. Stat. §95.11(2)(b)). An action founded on the design, planning or construction of an improvement to real property has four years, running from the earliest of the temporary or final certificate of occupancy, the certificate of completion, or abandonment of construction; for a latent defect the time runs from when it was or should have been discovered, but in any event the action must be brought within 7 years of those dates (§95.11(3)(b)).
• California bars actions over a latent deficiency in construction of an improvement to real property brought more than 10 years after substantial completion (Code Civ. Proc. §337.15), and defines a latent deficiency as one “not apparent by reasonable inspection.”

So a California remodeler who throws out the job file after three years has kept it for less than a third of the time it might be needed. Look up your own state’s periods for written contracts and construction defects, or ask a lawyer once, and write the answer on the inside of your job-file system.

One federal rule does set a job-file period for some trades. Firms doing renovation work covered by the EPA’s lead paint rule must keep the records that show compliance for 3 years after the renovation is completed (40 CFR 745.86): the lead determination, the occupant’s signed acknowledgment, the certified renovator and training records, and the cleaning verification. Who falls under that rule is in EPA’s Lead Paint Rule.

Before anything is thrown away, the IRS adds one more check: records no longer needed for taxes may still be needed for other purposes, and it names insurance companies and creditors as two that may require you to keep them longer.

Paper or scans

You do not need the paper. Publication 583 says all the requirements that apply to paper books and records also apply to electronic storage systems, which must index, store, preserve, retrieve and reproduce the records in legible form (the details are in Revenue Procedure 97-22). The original paper may be destroyed once the system has been tested to establish that it reproduces the records in compliance with those requirements, and the IRS may test your system. USCIS likewise allows an I-9 to be kept on paper, microfilm or microfiche, or electronically.

A filing habit that makes the purge easy

1. One folder per tax year. Bank and card statements, receipts, 1099s and the filed return. Name it with its date: “2025 taxes, keep until April 2029.”
2. One folder per asset. The truck, each trailer, each big tool, from purchase to sale. It closes three years after the return for the year of sale is due.
3. One folder per payroll year, one per employee. Payroll and tax deposits by year; each worker’s I-9 and personnel file with its own keep-until date written on it.
4. One folder per job, named by address and finish date. Contract, change orders, permits, inspections, photos, warranty. Its keep-until date is your state’s period, or the warranty, whichever is later.
5. Scan weekly, purge once a year. Photograph receipts as they come in. After you file each spring, delete or shred only the folders whose dates have passed, and keep a backup copy of everything else somewhere other than your phone.

An hour setting this up means that when a customer calls about a leak seven years on, or an examiner asks about a trailer you sold, the answer is one folder away.

General information, not legal or tax advice. Rules change and vary by state; check with the agency named above or a professional for your situation.