And how far back can the IRS audit? 3 years? 5? 7? More? I’ve been paying this audit protection thing for a couple years, and would be pretty happy to be completely care free when I file.
Several years ago I had an accountant do my taxes. He worked out of his home, and I was was doing independant IT contracting, so my taxes were complicated enough to demand an accountant. I usually got small returns or owed a little. I have no reason to think anything untoward ever happened, but one year I went to get a hold of him, and all traces of the man had disappeared. Phone disconnected, no longer living at the address, poof, gone. I got a hold of the guy who referred me, and his opinion was he was shady, and he had stopped using him a couple years earlier. Thanks for tipping me off to that fact buddy.
No, it’s 3 years. No SOL on fraud. It doesn’t hurt to keep the actual return for maybe 10 years, but the supporting documentation needs only to be kept for 3years. Of course, it’s 3 years after you dispose of a deprecable capital asset (for most of us, that means keep records of the sael of your home for at least three years after the sale).
Per my thread somewhere in this forum, keep them forever. The Soc. Sec. Admin. has a very difficult time recording your earnings for purposes of SS payouts. I say this from experience. The numbers change with every publication. I was unable to produce the paperwork to correct a problem, and they told me I was SOL. The number magically changed (with no proof provided by me) some time later, but I don’t know if it’s accurate. Then another number went bad.