What good records look like

01The forms that come to you

Send each one whole — every page, including the ones that look blank.

These dates move. When one falls on a weekend or a federal holiday it becomes the next working day.

• W-2s. One from every job, including any you left during the year. These are due to you by January 31.
• 1099s for interest, dividends, contract work, retirement withdrawals and state refunds.
• Brokerage statements. These have a later deadline than a W-2: February 15. Starting a return before yours arrives means starting it twice.
• 1095-A, if your health coverage came through the marketplace. It comes from the marketplace rather than from the IRS, early in the year. If part of the premium was paid straight to the insurer, the return settles that up against what you actually earned.
• K-1s. A partnership or S corporation owes you one by March 15 for a calendar year. Many of them file for more time and send K-1s in September.
• HSA and IRA contribution forms arrive in May, after the April deadline has passed. Tell us the amounts instead; there is nothing to wait for.

02The things no form will tell us

This is where a short return turns into a long one.

• What you paid for older investments. Brokers only report what you paid on securities bought after a cut-off date. That date is different for shares, for funds, and for bonds and options. Anything bought before yours arrives with the cost box empty, and the number has to come from somewhere else.

• What you paid for crypto. The statement has a box for it, but a broker only has to track what you paid on assets bought from 2026 onward. On anything held longer it may be filled in or it may not. Either way, the record you kept is the one that settles it.

• What a home cost, and what you have put into it since. The closing papers from when you bought, and receipts for work that improved the place rather than repaired it. Those matter in the year you sell, which may be twenty years out.

• Miles. A written record kept as you drive — the date, the distance and where you went. A total worked out in April is a different thing. The rule asks for the record, not the total.

• Cash that came in. Money with no form behind it still belongs on the return, and it needs something showing where it came from: a deposit, an invoice, a log.

• Gifts to charity of $250 or more. Each one needs a letter from the charity, and you need it before the return is filed. At that size a canceled check on its own does not do it.

• Accounts outside the US. If everything you hold abroad added together passed $10,000 at any point in the year, there is a separate report. It is not part of the tax return and it has its own deadline.

03Where you lived and where you worked

Ohio adds returns the federal one does not — the state, and often a city or a school district. Which ones, and how they work, differs by where you live and who collects for them. What helps is the same everywhere:

• Send the W-2 whole. The local boxes at the foot of it are what a city return runs on, and a cropped copy loses them.
• Name every place you lived and every place you worked during the year, not just the current one.
• Give the dates you moved or changed jobs, not only the addresses.
• Say if you worked somewhere different from where you live, or in more than one place. That combination is what decides which returns there are.

04How to send it

• A PDF downloaded from the bank or the broker beats a photograph of the same page.
• Every page, right way up, readable at full size.
• Whole documents. A cropped statement gets asked for again.
• Nothing with a Social Security number in it goes in an email.

05How long to keep it

• Three years after you file covers most of it.
• Six years where income was left off and the amount came to more than a quarter of what was reported.
• For as long as you own it, and three years past the sale — a house, a rental, shares. What you paid is the number you will need.

Not sure whether something counts? Include it.

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This is general information, not advice about a particular return.