Do you keep paper bank statements?

CompulsiveSaver

Hi,

Just wondering, do you keep your paper statements?

I have a relative that keeps decades of them! so I was just wondering do you actually need to?

I can access most of the statements via on-line banking, and I can would only need them if HMRC tried to claim I had not paid enough tax, would HMRC accept an electronic version? as I know many of the banks charge for printing them from years ago.

I asked HMRC a few years ago and they person in the call centre said potentially they could ask to see all statements ever! (so my relative would be correct!), now I see the flaw in that as most financial companies only keep the records for a few years.

Any ideas?  should I be creating a massive fire risk in my house?

eskbanker

CompulsiveSaver said:

I asked HMRC a few years ago and they person in the call centre said potentially they could ask to see all statements ever! (so my relative would be correct!), now I see the flaw in that as most financial companies only keep the records for a few years.

Current published HMRC guidance is clear that it's only a couple of years now for tax-related purposes: https://www.gov.uk/keeping-your-pay-tax-records/how-long-to-keep-your-records

Daliah

I haven't received a paper statement in years, never mind keeping them. Everything is kept paperless and online. 

If you want to keep many years worth of statements, download the PDFs and store them in the cloud. 

dunstonh

I have a relative that keeps decades of them! so I was just wondering do you actually need to?

I have all mine going back to 1988.  However, all the old paper ones are scanned to pdf whereas the modern ones are pdf as default.

I haven't deleted them as file space is not an issue.

CompulsiveSaver

Thanks both, sounds like I can get rid of some paperwork.

I am not sure my relative will get rid of theirs, but we will see.

Stubod

..nope....haven't had one for years, all online now...

Bridlington1

The only statement I get paperless is the Nationwide FlexDirect statement, and I print that every month. I've kept every single statement and every single letter I've ever received from my banks/building societies and have no intention of changing this.

sebtomato

I bought a document scanner 10 years ago, and I have scanned all my important documents ever since: bank statement, insurance, tax, council etc etc. 

A proper document scanner can scan multiple pages in one go (auto feeder), do both sides at once, convert to PDF but also perform OCR (so text is actually searchable).

All the documents are stored as PDF on my computer, and backed up to the cloud (encrypted at source first). Once scanned, documents are destroyed.

In case of fire in my home or my computer failing or being stolen, I am covered.

steveksullivan

Somewhere in my head I have it that the Revenue rules were that they coud go back seven years for any tax issues other than inheritance tax for which they could go back 'indefinitely  - but I cant see those numbers now......?!?!?

Also just noticed their wording 'You need to keep records if you have to send HM Revenue and Customs (HMRC) a Self Assessment tax return.' Does this mean by implication that if you DONT have to send in a SA return you DONT have to keep records? But I guess you'd then just be at the mercy of the revenue should they make any mistakes that you wanted to contest.

It's OK though .... that's never going to happen ......

Olinda99

most banks allow you to download as a pdf (as mentioned above) which is what I do.

Millyonare

Download PDFs for everything. Save them to a 1TB USB stick or SSD hard drive, such as SanDisk Ultra. If no PDF available, take a screenshot, with a visible time and date, and save that. A USB stick is so small, the size of a thumb, it can be stored virtually anywhere, with a password, making them much more secure than the cloud.