sheeegan asked:
As a business owner in Michigan – how long do I need to keep the boxes and boxes of business records that I have in the basement before I can shred them? Nobody has even needed any of them over the past 11 years – they are just collecting dust and taking up a LOT of space. Thanks for any help.
ProConsultancy.com
As a business owner in Michigan – how long do I need to keep the boxes and boxes of business records that I have in the basement before I can shred them? Nobody has even needed any of them over the past 11 years – they are just collecting dust and taking up a LOT of space. Thanks for any help.
ProConsultancy.com
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Business
Low Cost Bargain
It depends on laws & regulations of your constituency, though 6 – 7 years are norm. Do check with your accountant.
Failed Experiment
You might want to check your state laws and ask the local BBB what they suggest, but in most states that I know of, businesses only need to keep the last 3-5 years worth of records before shredding them and up to the last 10 years worth of tax records.
Good luck and hope this helps.
business
I would check into paperless office solutions. Very easy to do really. Just buy a scanner designed for it not a flat bed and start scanning the documents. Save them on you computer and back them up on an external drive or flash drive or DVD.
You’d think that 11 years of papers would take up a lot of space, but I’ve done this for more than one customer in the law and health field and you’d be amazed how much you can stuff into 4 GB of space.
You can get a cheap and reliable scanner from Epson or HP for under $200. Scan them like photos and place them into appropiate folders that you created then back them up. You will always have them and will be able to reproduce them if need be.
Photoshop Life
I’ve heard it’s 7 years. Give your accountant a quick call to verify it. But I believe the IRS will only ever look at records up to 7 years prior.
Low Cost Bargain
It is all a record by record answer. There are laws you need to follow from local, state and federal government including the IRS, HHS, SEC and FTC to just start with.