Least Necessary File Drawer Contents

[cjsmith]

OK, it's a contest! What's the most useless, silly, superfluous stuff CJ has?

[Poll #667449]

I may have to have a second voting round on the most useless single item. After all, I'm nowhere near done cleaning this stuff up yet.

Comments

[joedecker.livejournal.com]

Says the Chris: On the taxes, you're fine for small errors "six years from date of filing" is the limitation for gross errors (25% or more of AGI), no statue of limitations on fraud but unless you've left some big smoking gun for some Big Tax Crime you ain't gonna get hit by that. Apparently a few people do keep copies of the signed and dated return, but not the supporting information, in case the IRS decides that you never filed a tax return for a given year, and that would be a "no statute of limitations" issue. You could still trash the supporting info, though. Here's a roughly concurring reference. (http://www.irstaxattorney.com/statute.html)

Also: some of that stuff is probably best shredded.

[mactavish.livejournal.com]

*sigh* I wish I'd kept more records. Every time I moved, I'd say, "They'll never ask for this," and trash it.

[cjsmith.livejournal.com]

Have you ever been burned by not having something? Bad decision on an audit due to no documentation, or anything like that? I ask because I suspect your approach is really the saner one, and I wonder whether it has hurt you.

[sunnydale47.livejournal.com]

I have. Tom was a packrat extraordinaire, and apparently his late first wife was even worse. When we got married he had 27 years of financial records -- cancelled checks, paid bills, receipts, everything! When we moved into the house we bought together I made him throw the old stuff away except for the last few years' worth. We looked through them, chuckling at how cheap things had been, and then pitched them.

The house Tom and his first wife had lived in was in her name. Her will stipulated that when it was sold, the proceeds were to be split four ways among her three children and Tom. That didn't seem like an issue until he got sick and we were getting his affairs in order ... and I learned that she had owned the land before they'd been married, but that Tom had actually paid for building the house, and made all the mortgage payments over all the many years they lived in it! He felt so badly about leaving me with so little -- that was the main part of his "wealth" and he wanted to make sure I was taken care of -- and realized that the arrangement he had thought was fair (because the house had stayed in her name) wasn't fair at all.

The lawyer said Tom had a very sound basis for challenging the will and claiming sole right of the portion of the sale price (which included very substantial appreciation) that was represented by all the improvements on the land. But of course we'd need proof that Tom had made all those payments rather than his wife -- any records would do, such as cancelled checks, or receipts, or even old check registers....

Oh. My. God. He had had plenty of proof ... but we'd thrown it all out two years earlier, never imagining that 27-year-old cancelled checks could possibly be needed for anything.

I don't throw out any financial records any more.
Throw out all the other useless stuff, but stick the financial records in a corner somewhere and hang onto them. You never know what they might be needed for.

[cjsmith.livejournal.com]

Ouch. That's brutal.

I don't throw out any financial records any more.

I can certainly see why. Now I gotta ask: how many file drawers' worth of paper do you have?

[cjsmith.livejournal.com]

Oh cool! That's where the six years comes from, then. Thanks; it's good to have a reference.

no statue of limitations on fraud but unless you've left some big smoking gun for some Big Tax Crime you ain't gonna get hit by that.

This always worries me. It doesn't matter whether it WAS fraud, it matters whether SOMEONE THINKS it was fraud -- and then I'd want the records so I could say it wasn't. (Granted, no one's ever going to come after a just-out-of-college kid making maybe $30K tops.)

Definitely: the shredder is getting its exercise. I had every invoice I had ever written for every consulting job I had ever held. They all have, and need, among other things, my SSN. Whirr, whirr, whirr...