How long to keep bank statements

Updated August 2026 · 5 minute read

Keep a bank statement for 7 years if it supports anything on a tax return, and for at least 1 year if it does not. Your bank keeps its own copies for years after that, but getting them back ranges from a free download to a paid research request, so the safest copy is the one you keep yourself.

The retention periods that matter

There is no single legal deadline for personal statements. The periods below come from what the statement might have to prove later, which is almost always a tax question.

How long to keep a bank statement, by what it supports
What the statement supports	Keep it for	Why
Nothing on a tax return	1 year	Long enough to catch billing errors, disputed charges, and missed subscription renewals.
Income or deductions on a tax return	7 years	The IRS can generally audit 3 years back, 6 if income was underreported by more than 25%. Seven covers the edge cases with a margin.
A property or asset you still own	Until 7 years after you sell	The purchase records set your cost basis, and the clock on them starts at the sale, not the purchase.
A business of any size	7 years	Business records carry the same audit windows plus lender, insurer, and partner requests that arrive years later.

The audit windows are the IRS's published periods of limitations. For anything unusual, fraud allegations, unfiled years, or worthless securities, the window is longer or never closes; that is a question for a tax professional, not a bank statement page.

Paper or digital makes no difference, except to you

The IRS accepts digital copies of records, and so do lenders, insurers, and courts in the ordinary case. A legible PDF of a statement is as good as the mailed original, so the choice of format is about retrieval, not validity.

That cuts one way: digital wins. A folder of PDFs named by account and month can be searched, backed up, and handed to an accountant in one attachment. A drawer of paper can burn, fade, or move house badly. If you still receive paper statements, the practical move is to download the PDF each month from online banking and let the paper be the backup, not the record.

What digital storage does not fix is the account closing. Online statement access belongs to the account, and when the account goes, the login usually goes with it. Download everything before you close an account; it is a 10 minute job that saves a research request later.

What your bank keeps, and for how long

United States banks are required by the Bank Secrecy Act to retain account records, statements included, for 5 years, and most large banks keep 7 years or more of statements available through online banking. So a statement you failed to keep is rarely gone; it is just behind a request.

The difference is friction. Statements inside the online banking window are a free self-serve download. Statements past the window, or from a closed account, mean a written request, identity verification, a per-statement or per-hour research fee at many banks, and a wait measured in days to weeks. The bank's copy is a safety net, not a filing system.

When the pile of statements has to become numbers

The reason old statements get retrieved at all is that someone needs the transactions inside them: an accountant reconstructing a year of books, a lawyer dividing accounts, a lender averaging deposits, a landlord verifying income. At that point the statement is the wrong shape. It is a PDF, and the person asking wants a spreadsheet.

Retyping a year of statements is slow and error-prone, which is the problem LedgerBox exists for. Upload the PDFs, statement scans and photos included, and each one comes back as rows with the arithmetic checked: debits, credits, and running balances have to add up, and any row the extraction is not sure about is flagged for review instead of guessed. From there it exports to Excel, CSV, QuickBooks formats, or JSON.

Questions people ask

Can I shred paper statements if the bank has them online?

Once you have your own digital copy, yes. Keep the download, not the promise: online access typically covers a fixed window and ends when the account closes, so the copy that counts is the one in your own storage.

How long do banks keep statements?

US banks must retain account records for 5 years under the Bank Secrecy Act, and most large banks keep 7 years or more of statements retrievable. Older statements and closed accounts usually mean a written request and often a research fee.

Do I need original paper statements for an IRS audit?

No. The IRS accepts legible digital records, including PDF statements downloaded from online banking. What matters is that the record is complete and readable, not that it arrived in the mail.

Should a business keep statements longer than a person?

Plan on 7 years as the floor. Businesses face the same tax audit windows plus requests from lenders, insurers, and partners that can arrive years after the fact, and reconstructing statements for a dissolved entity is harder than keeping them was.

How long should I keep credit card statements?

The same logic applies: 1 year for ordinary spending, 7 years when a statement documents a deduction, a business expense, or the purchase record for something you still own.