hi lee phillips here again i want to talk about how long do you save your tax receipts your tax
records the IRS can audit you up to three years from the time that you file your taxes sort of
if you file your taxes in january and they're not due until april 15th
then they have three years from april 15th now if you extend and you don't file them
until later in the year then they have from three years from the time that you file so it's either
from the time the tax should have been filed or from the time the tax actually was filed
they have three years to audit you you need to save your records at least those three years now
don't be tricked okay because you're filing last year's taxes
in this year but you don't file until august let's say so it isn't three years from 2021 for example
it's three years from 2022 august when you actually filed the return
so don't be tricked by thinking oh i'm filing 2021 taxes i have i don't have to keep them just 2020
2, 3, 4. no you've got to keep them longer than that because it's from the time that you actually
file the tax that's three years then now there are other issues and that is they can always
audit you forever if they allege fraud now you're not going to do fraud so we're not worried about
that we're worried about the three years but you may well be a real estate investor and if i am
filing schedules and doing real estate stuff i really need to keep those tax records forever
because if i rent the house for five years i rehab it everything else i do it for 10 years
and i sell the house well i have to go back and i have to be able to prove
that i put improvements in and that increased the basis and so when i sell it i really don't have
that much profit because i increased the basis from what i bought it at and how do you know what
you bought it at you need to save those records so with real estate you need to save the records
basically indefinitely what you're going to do is you're going to scan the receipts and the records
on the real estate you're going to scan the mortgage statement for the year you're going to
scan the insurance statement for the year you're going to scan all of the receipts for the repairs
that you made you're going to scan all of this stuff keep it in a file such and such an address
1998 and put the receipts in there in in in the scanned file now the IRS will accept scan receipts
just like they accept regular receipts in fact it may be even better because your regular receipts
are going to fade over the next decade or two while you're waiting to sell this piece of real
estate so go ahead and scan them keep them in an electronic file for that property on that year
and then you can go back when you sell a piece of property and easily bring everything back together
see what your stepped-up basis is how much you've depreciated the roof because the roof is under a
different depreciation schedule than the general structure itself because you put a new roof on and
it started appreciation schedule for the roof over its class life so real estate becomes a little
more iffy standard stuff three years and real estate i'm gonna say you need to keep it forever
at least until you sell a house in three or four years after that because they can audit you for
three years after you sell a place so keep the real estate receipts keep them scanned and you
shouldn't have any problem it doesn't take up a lot of space to to store a scanned file and
you should be able to get what you need out of it now don't forget to subscribe hit the bell ding
us love us whatever you do oh and by the way make sure that you get my 10 tax tips there's
a link just go to the link and order up the 10 tax tips it's free to you don't worry about it
and i've gone through and figured 10 ways that i think you should be able to lower your justice
adjusted gross income not by 15 bucks by 15 000 bucks if you're making a hundred thousand
so this is good stuff guys get the 10 tax tips and we will see you next time