How do you store your tax documents?

I keep my tax documents the same as I do other documents. I download all the forms from my financial institutions (W2, 1099, 1098, etc) in PDF format and store in a Tax folder in My Documents, with a subfolder for each year. I do all my worksheets in an Excel spreadsheet in the same folder. Paper documents I scan to PDF and store there and shred. Once I complete my return (freefilefillableforms.com), I print to PDF and store in the same folder.

The tax folders get backed up to a second hard drive on my machine, and then to Carbonite, with my other documents.

I have a local server that I store all my personal documents on. It's backed up to a 2nd internal drive, btrfs, which then takes a snapshot.

It's also backed up to a cloud server with borg, which is encrypted and doesn't trust the endpoint.

Aside from that, I keep all the paper copies of forms I receive in a filing cabinet. In January each year, I put the last year on a folder and just throw all my paperwork in there as it arrives. I have folders going back to 1999, the year I was married.

I'm super late to this thread, but I've done a deep dive into this area and I'm happy to share what I do.

* First, I am about 99.9% paperless. Anything older than prior year is electronic. Some current year documentation is not yet scanned, but will be during the tax prep season

* Second, backups. Follow the rule of three. One offsite (crashplan), two onsite (main computer + storage device), three different file systems (whatever crashplan uses, OSX, Netgear / USB). I test my offsite recovery monthly with a sample selection.

* Three, I have a single precise location on computer with directories for each tax year.

* Four, I have subdirectories under each tax year that have a consistent retention requirement. 1 year after filing, 3 years, 5 years (FBAR), 7 years, until my retirement so +30 years, and until my death so +50 years, and active meaning do-not-delete until the tax event closes whereupon the retention period can be set. So like US bank statements that have a 1099, statements go into directory A with a 1 year retention. 1099s go into a different directory with a 3 year retention. A purchase of a new stock, the confirmation for that transaction would go under "active" meaning there is no deletion date, and that confirm would stay under "active" until the stock position was sold. At time of sale, that data is refiled into the correct tax year, where the appropriate retention period is applied to the info.

* Five, I use an application called TagSpaces, create a date specific retention framework, then tag each sub-directory from steps three and four with a destruction date. So tag "2019-12-31-7yr" was applied I think to tax year 2011. This past new year, I checked all objects tagged "2019-12-31-7yr", made sure nothing was misfiled under the tag, and then delete the object. Eventually a specific tax year will only have things intended to keep until retirement and until my death.

Google Drive. Might not be the best, but it is easy.

Ultra-late to the party, however, you may want to look into this project: https://github.com/the-paperless-project/paperless

Tbh, i don't use it yet, but will once i get my homelab up and running (should be any moment cough)

PDFs in Dropbox, stored in an encrypted sparse disk image (https://www.sas.upenn.edu/computing/natsci/sparse). I keep an additional copy of the encrypted disk image on a flash drive in one of those fire-resistant lockbox things.

Google Drive + Google sheets

I have a google drive folder with the information I need (bills, returns, forms, etc).

On top of that I have a google spreadsheet that links to the file and calculates amounts (like VAT paid) extracted (by hand) from the files. This acts both like an spreadsheet and an index to the data ;-).

Everything is shared with my SO just in case something happens to me.

In an encrypted volume using Veracrypt with a strong password. With this, where I store this encrypted file isn’t a huge concern from the privacy point of view, though I do store it online in a couple of places and have adequate backups.

PDFs in dropbox. I coincidentally just saved this year's w2 there, and noticed they go aaaaalllll the way back to 2002; I can't believe I was actually diligent in college!

I have an encrypted sparse bundle disk image (.dmg) that I use to keep all documents like that: tax, bank and investment statements, insurance policies, etc.

It lives on an external drive that is backed up to Backblaze. Since it changes fairly infrequently, I'll also manually drop copies of it on other clouds occasionally.

In a Git repo. People say that Git does not work well for binary files, but that applies only to large files (which most PDFs are not) or files that change a lot over time (which tax documents should not). For LOCKSS purposes, the Git repo gets cloned to different PCs or USB sticks.

LOCKSS - Lots Of Copies Keeps Stuff Safe.

At minimum three copies, one offsite in case of disaster and and preferably offline in case of ransomware. The details matter less unless you're worried about someone leaking your W-2 information?

I keep mine in an encrypted disk image (default support in Mac OS), with the image itself backed up as appropriate. Very simple, straightforward, and secure.

I store them as files in my home directory. I mark them as inviolate (chattr +i) and they are of course backed up along with all my files.

Paper in a safety deposit box at the bank going back seven years. It’s the only way to be sure.

I have a backed up digital and a print version of a "bureaucracy-folder" where those kind of documents go. There is a section for things that I reasonably often need access to (e.g. certificate of employment, copy of working visa, vaccination certificate, etc.), the rest is basically just an append-only store.

I like to keep my personal life simple, so there is not much documents overall and i pretty much never needed access to anything older than weeks. When I was freelancing I had a more elaborate document management system in place regarding that work, but now this works just fine.

google drive that backs up folder on computer. I scan everything.