Organizing the Tax Records: My Own Story

Tax-related papers. It's easy to be overwhelmed by them, and have them take up an inordinate amount of space.

While you should certainly ask your own tax accountant or tax attorney about his or her recommendations on record retention, I personally follow the guidelines I see most often: Keep the returns themselves forever, and keep all supporting documents for seven years. (That's a general rule; there are exceptions.) And since I've seen conflicting advice on whether or not it's OK to rely on scanned copies, I keep paper originals for all those "last seven years" papers.




But even with this approach, I had much more paper than I wanted, or needed — and I wasn't storing it well. For the last couple years I've been using my ScanSnap to make scans of all tax-related papers, and then filing them in my file cabinet — and that worked well. But before then I'd been keeping my tax-related papers in fireproof boxes, and the boxes were taking up room I wanted for other purposes. And the old tax returns, dating back to the 1980s, were taking up room in my file cabinet.

So this past weekend I finally embarked on my "clean up the tax records" project.

Paper reduction: I scanned all the old returns, after blacking out my social security number and my signature. (I don't need either of these floating around in electronic form.) After making sure I had a good backup in place, I then shredded the returns. I have a very full recycling bin this week!

Improved storage: For returns within the 7-year period, I scanned what had not yet been scanned, and put the papers in my file cabinet — in the space that used to hold all those really old returns. Since I have electronic copies, I'm no longer afraid of losing the originals, and see no need for those fireproof boxes.

I'm not quite done with the project, but it's well underway and I'll finish it this week — and then I'll Freecycle all those boxes.



While all the scanning was a bit tedious, a good scanner (and a good shredder) made things go pretty quickly. And now I have a lot of reclaimed space — and I have all my tax information at my fingertips, in well-organized computer files.

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Filing Supplies: All About Redwelds

It was the bastion of a successful, busy lawyer as little as 15 years ago. It sat on desks, was cradled by counsel, paralegals and secretaries and, undoubtedly, caused many backaches. I am writing of the humble Redweld — that brown, expanding folder that housed nearly every aspect of a matter from motions to correspondence to billing. — Eric Elfman

If you've been in a legal office lately, you may well have seen these files around — even if Elfman writes about them as a thing of the past. And plenty of other people use them, too.

As John's Legal Lexicon explains: "When your lawyer says 'Put it in the Redweld,' he is referring to one of those large, usually red, file folder holders with a red ribbon for tying it shut. The name comes from the colour and the fact that the manufacturer wanted to emphasise the weld-like strength of the glue holding it together."

Notice that Redweld is always capitalized? That's because it's a registered trademark. Technically, the products are Redweld expanding pockets and envelopes. Companies other than Redweld, such as Smead, make similar expanding pockets, but they aren't called Redwelds. And anyone using the term "redwells" is probably just confused about the term.

Want to know why lawyers like Redwelds? Blond Justice explains why she prefers them over binders, and how she uses them when preparing for a trial. The comments are interesting, too, as other lawyers weigh in.




And finally, LacquerWear informs us that there's a nail polish which matches the color of a Redweld.

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