Updated November 2026 · Southern New Hampshire
NH document retention guide: what to keep, and for how long
How long New Hampshire households and businesses should keep tax returns, bank statements, payroll, I-9 forms and personnel files, with the official federal or state source for every period. Then when and how to shred what has run out.
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Quick answer
Most New Hampshire households can shred tax records 3 years after filing, but keep them 6 years if income was underreported by more than 25 percent and 7 years for a bad debt or worthless securities claim (IRS). Employers keep payroll records 3 years (U.S. Department of Labor and NH RSA 279:27), employment tax records and W-4s 4 years (IRS), Form I-9 for 3 years after hire or 1 year after employment ends, whichever is later (USCIS), and personnel records at least 1 year (EEOC). When a period runs out, New Hampshire Document Shredding destroys the paper for 99 cents a pound plus $34.90 per job at our Tewksbury office, with a Certificate of Destruction.
How record retention works in New Hampshire
A retention period is the window during which someone might reasonably ask you to prove something. The IRS might audit a return. The Department of Labor might check whether overtime was paid. A former employee might file a discrimination charge. Each agency sets a minimum time to keep the paper that answers its questions, and once that window closes the paper is mostly a liability waiting in a basement.
New Hampshire adds fewer rules than most states, because it has no broad tax on wages. For households, the federal tax rules do most of the work. For employers, federal labor and immigration rules set the floor and a short list of New Hampshire statutes sits on top. This NH document retention guide pulls the common ones together, each tied to the official page we checked in November 2026.
Two habits make every period easier to apply. First, know what starts the clock. A tax clock starts when you file, an I-9 clock starts at hire and again at termination, and a property clock does not start until you sell. Second, when two rules cover the same paper, the longer one wins.
None of this is legal or tax advice for your situation. If you run a regulated business, have an open audit or are settling an estate, check with your accountant or attorney before you shred. What this guide gives you is the starting point and the source to read for yourself.
How long to keep household records
Households have fewer formal rules than businesses. Most of what you keep is tied to the IRS windows, and the rest depends on whether a bill is paid, a claim is closed or a property is still yours. Here is the table we hand to customers who walk in with a closet full of folders.
| Record | How long to keep | What starts the clock | Official source |
|---|---|---|---|
| Income tax returns and supporting records | 3 years in most cases. 6 years if you left out income over 25 percent of the gross on the return. 7 years for a bad debt or worthless securities deduction. Indefinitely if you did not file or filed a fraudulent return | Filing the return | IRS, How long should I keep records |
| Bank and credit card statements | Statements that support a deduction or income on a return: keep with that year’s tax records. Others: no federal period for households, so shred once you have reconciled them | Filing the return they support | IRS, same page, for statements used on a return |
| Pay stubs | Until you have matched them against your W-2 and filed. Keep longer only if they support something on the return | Filing the return | IRS, same page, as supporting records |
| Medical bills and EOBs | Until the bill is paid and the insurance claim is closed. If you deduct medical expenses, keep them with that year’s tax records | Payment, or filing the return with the deduction | IRS, same page, for deducted expenses |
| Insurance policies and claim papers | While the policy is in force and until every claim under it is settled. Your insurer may ask you to keep records longer than the IRS does | Policy end or claim settlement | IRS, same page, which warns that insurers and creditors may require longer |
| Home purchase, improvements and other property records | Until the period of limitations expires for the year you sell or otherwise dispose of the property | The year you sell | IRS, same page, property records |
| Investment purchase confirmations | Treated like property records: until the window closes for the year you sell the shares | The year you sell | IRS, same page, property records |
The property rule catches more people than any other. If you bought your house in Londonderry in 1998 and put on a new roof in 2012, the receipts for both matter until three years after you file the return that reports the sale. That can be decades. Keep them in one folder labelled with the address, and do not let a purge sweep it up.
Bank statements are the opposite problem. Most households keep far too many. Your bank can usually produce old statements on request, and a paper statement that does not support a tax return has no federal holding period. Our post on whether to shred old bank statements goes through the details by account type.
Medical paperwork deserves care in both directions. Keep EOBs until the provider and the insurer agree on what you owe, since billing disputes can take months. After that, the pages are full of your name, date of birth, member number and diagnosis codes. Shred them, do not recycle them. The EOB retention guide covers both patient and practice timelines.
A few papers have no clock at all because you will always need them: birth and marriage certificates, Social Security cards, passports, adoption and divorce decrees, military discharge papers, wills and deeds to property you still own. Store those in a fire-resistant box and leave them out of the shred pile.
Tax records: the federal rule and the New Hampshire twist
The IRS sets the clock most households care about. Its page “How long should I keep records” lists the periods of limitations that decide how long a return can be amended or assessed. Three years from filing covers most people. If you file a claim for credit or refund after filing, it is 3 years from filing or 2 years from paying the tax, whichever is later.
3 years
The general rule for income tax returns and the receipts, 1099s, W-2s and statements that support them, counted from the date you filed.
6 years
If you did not report income that you should have, and it is more than 25 percent of the gross income shown on the return.
7 years
If you claimed a loss from worthless securities or a bad debt deduction. Keep the records that prove the loss.
Indefinitely
If you did not file a return, or filed a fraudulent one, there is no end date. The assessment window never closes.
New Hampshire does not tax wages, so most residents have no state income tax return to keep. Businesses are different. Under RSA 21-J:29, taxes administered by the New Hampshire Department of Revenue Administration generally must be assessed within 3 years after the return is filed or due. The window stretches to 6 years if gross income or business profits were understated by more than 25 percent, and there is no limit at all if no return was filed or tax was willfully evaded. For a business filing New Hampshire returns, that means the state papers follow roughly the same 3 and 6 year pattern as the federal ones.
Our habit at the counter: shred the supporting receipts once the window closes, but keep a copy of each return itself. A return takes almost no space and answers questions about Social Security earnings, loan applications and estate work years later. The longer walk-through, including where the New Hampshire interest and dividends tax fits in, is in our post on how long to keep tax records.
How long New Hampshire employers keep business records
Employers juggle more clocks than households, and the agencies do not coordinate. The safest approach is to find every rule that touches a type of record and keep it for the longest one. Here are the rules that apply to almost every New Hampshire employer, large or small.
| Record | How long to keep | What starts the clock | Official source |
|---|---|---|---|
| Payroll records | At least 3 years | Date of the record | U.S. Department of Labor, Fact Sheet 21 (FLSA). EEOC for ADEA payroll |
| Hours and wages records | 3 years | Date of the record | New Hampshire RSA 279:27 |
| Time cards, wage rate tables, work schedules | 2 years | Date of the record | U.S. Department of Labor, Fact Sheet 21 (FLSA) |
| Form I-9 | 3 years after the date of hire or 1 year after employment ends, whichever is later | Hire date and termination date | USCIS, M-274 Handbook, Retaining Form I-9 |
| Form W-4 and other employment tax records | At least 4 years after filing the fourth-quarter return for the year. 6 years for qualified sick and family leave and employee retention credit records | Fourth-quarter filing | IRS, Employment tax recordkeeping |
| Business income tax records | 3 years, 6 if income underreported by more than 25 percent, 7 for bad debt or worthless securities | Filing the return | IRS, How long should I keep records |
| New Hampshire business tax records | 3 years, 6 if income or profits understated by more than 25 percent, no limit if no return filed | Return filed or due | New Hampshire RSA 21-J:29 |
| Personnel and HR files (applications, promotions, discipline) | 1 year. After an involuntary termination, 1 year from the termination date | Date of the record, or the termination date | EEOC, Recordkeeping requirements |
| Records relevant to an EEOC charge or lawsuit | Until the charge and any lawsuit are finally resolved | Filing of the charge | EEOC, Recordkeeping requirements |
| Contracts and agreements | Life of the contract, then at least as long as a claim can be brought. New Hampshire’s general limit for personal actions is 3 years from the act, or from when the harm was or should have been discovered | End of the contract or the breach | New Hampshire RSA 508:4. Some claims have longer limits, so ask your attorney |
| Patient medical records (practices) | Set by your licensing board’s rules and your payer contracts, on top of HIPAA safeguards. Check your board’s current rule before you set a schedule | Usually the last patient visit | Your New Hampshire licensing board |
Notice how payroll overlaps. The Department of Labor says 3 years for payroll and 2 for time cards. New Hampshire’s RSA 279:27 says 3 years for records of hours and wages, which covers what many employers think of as time records. The IRS wants employment tax records for 4. The simple approach is to keep the whole payroll file for 4 years after the fourth-quarter filing and shred it as a block. That is simpler than splitting folders by agency.
The I-9 rule trips people up because it has two clocks. For someone hired in March 2020 who left in June 2025, the 3-years-from-hire date passed in March 2023, but the 1-year-after-leaving date is June 2026. The later one controls. Keep I-9s apart from personnel files so you can purge them on their own schedule. If you need a department-by-department template to fill in, our record retention schedule template page has one.
Medical and dental practices have more layers than this table shows, from licensing rules to payer contracts. Our old medical records guide walks a practice through retention before destruction.
Retention periods at a glance
The chart lines up the minimum periods from the tables above. Read it as a floor, not a target. Every bar assumes nothing else, such as a lawsuit, an audit or a property you still own, is holding the record open.
Two things stand out. First, almost everything lands between 1 and 4 years. A small office that keeps the last four full years and shreds the fifth each January will be on the right side of most of these rules most of the time. The longer bars are exceptions you should flag on the box when you file it.
Second, the long bars all come from the IRS and depend on what happened on the return, not on the type of paper. If nothing was underreported and you claimed no bad debt, the 6 and 7 year periods never apply. If you are not sure, keep the year’s records for 7 and shred them then.
Keep or shred: a four-question test
When you open an old box, run each folder through the same four questions. If any answer says keep, it goes back on the shelf with a new shred year written on the label. If every answer says shred, it goes in the shred box.
- Check for holds. A lawsuit, a government audit, an EEOC charge or an insurance claim freezes every related record, no matter what the retention table says.
- Find the longest period. Look up every rule that touches the record in the tables above. Payroll, for example, is 3 years for the Department of Labor and 4 for the IRS. Use 4.
- Check for an open reason. Property you still own, a policy still in force or a loan still being paid keeps the papers alive even after a tax window closes.
- Shred, then document. Destroy the paper so it cannot be read or put back together, and keep the Certificate of Destruction with your retention log or the list of what was in the box.
When and how to shred expired records
Retention tells you when paper may go. It says nothing about how. Expired records still carry Social Security numbers, account numbers and signatures, so they belong in a shredder, not the recycling bin at the transfer station. The FTC Disposal Rule at 16 CFR Part 682 gives burning, pulverizing or shredding as the way to dispose of consumer report information, and that is a sensible standard for any personal record.
Home shredder
Fine for a few pages of mail a week. It gets slow and jams on a full box, and a cheap strip-cut model leaves long strips that can be pieced back together. For a yearly purge of several boxes it is the wrong tool.
Community shred day
Towns, banks and credit unions host free events on their own dates, each with its own limits. Good for a household with two or three boxes that can wait for the next one. Our list of shred events explains how they work in southern New Hampshire.
Drop-off or pickup service
Any weekday, any volume, with a Certificate of Destruction. 99 cents a pound at the Tewksbury counter, or the same rate plus a zone fee when a driver collects the boxes from your home or office.
Timing matters too. January is the natural moment for most people, right after the year closes and before tax season fills the dining table. Businesses often pick the month after the fourth-quarter payroll filing, when the oldest employment tax year falls out of the 4-year window. Whatever month you choose, make it the same one every year. An annual purge keeps the pile from ever getting big enough to dread.
- Pull the expired years. Use the shred year on each box label. If boxes are not labelled, sort by year first and apply the tables.
- Do a last look. Check each folder for the permanent papers listed above, like deeds, certificates and wills, that sometimes end up filed with tax years.
- Leave the staples in. You do not need to remove staples, paper clips, binder clips, rubber bands or file folders. Take out three-ring binder hardware and hanging-folder frames only.
- Bag the media. Old CDs of tax software backups, USB sticks and hard drives go in a separate bag. They are quoted per item and physically destroyed.
- Bring or book. Walk in at 1215 Main Street, Unit 115, Tewksbury, Monday to Friday, 10 a.m. to 5 p.m., or book a pickup. Paper dropped off is shredded the same business day.
- File the certificate. Put the Certificate of Destruction with your retention log so you can show what was destroyed and when.
For a household purge, the math is short. A full banker’s box of paper weighs about 30 pounds, so three boxes is about 90 pounds. At 99 cents a pound that is $89.10, plus the $34.90 per-job fees, for $124.00 in all. Bring 10 or more large boxes and the flat rate of $20 a box applies instead. Our shredding rates page has every price.
For an office, the question is usually whether to drive or book the driver. Pickup uses the same shredding rate and adds a zone fee of $129.95, $159.95 or $199.95. Our page on off-site shredding explains the zones, and households closer to the line usually choose drop-off shredding.
Legal holds, estates and other exceptions
The tables give minimums for normal times. A handful of events override them, and shredding during one of them can cause far more trouble than any storage bill.
- A lawsuit filed or reasonably expected. Keep everything related until your attorney releases it in writing.
- An EEOC charge. The EEOC says relevant records must be kept until the final disposition of the charge and any lawsuit based on it.
- An IRS or New Hampshire Department of Revenue Administration audit. Keep every year under review until it closes.
- An unfiled or fraudulent return. Both the IRS and RSA 21-J:29 leave the assessment window open indefinitely.
- A breach investigation. If you have to send notices under New Hampshire’s breach law, RSA 359-C:20, keep the records of what was exposed and what you did.
- An estate. Executors should hold the decedent’s last returns and supporting papers until the estate is settled and the final tax windows have closed.
Estates deserve their own word. When a parent dies, the family usually finds decades of paper. Most of it can go, but not until the final income tax return is filed and the estate attorney has what probate needs. Our guide to shredding after a death in NH walks through what to hold and what to shred first to cut off identity theft.
A business should write these exceptions into a short policy, so no one has to decide on the spot. Name who can approve destruction, who can place and release a hold, and where certificates are kept. Our page on writing a records destruction policy gives you the sections to include. The certificate of destruction is the proof that the policy was followed.
If you are unsure whether a hold applies, do not shred. Storing one more box for a year costs almost nothing. Destroying records after a lawsuit or audit has started can cost a great deal.
Frequently asked questions
How long should I keep tax returns in New Hampshire?
The IRS says 3 years from filing in most cases, 6 years if you left out income over 25 percent of the gross shown, 7 years for a bad debt or worthless securities deduction, and indefinitely if you did not file or filed a fraudulent return. New Hampshire does not tax wages, so most households have no state return to keep.
Does New Hampshire have its own record retention law for businesses?
For some records, yes. RSA 279:27 requires employers to keep records of hours and wages for 3 years. RSA 21-J:29 gives the Department of Revenue Administration 3 years to assess most taxes, 6 if income was understated by more than 25 percent. Most other periods come from federal agencies such as the IRS, Department of Labor, EEOC and USCIS.
How long do I keep an I-9 after an employee leaves?
USCIS says to keep Form I-9 for 3 years after the date of hire or 1 year after employment ends, whichever is later. For someone who worked five years, that usually means 1 year after the last day. For someone who left after six months, it means 3 years from the hire date. Calculate both and use the later date.
How long do employers keep payroll records?
The Department of Labor requires at least 3 years for payroll records under the FLSA and 2 years for time cards and wage rate tables. New Hampshire RSA 279:27 says 3 years for hours and wages. The IRS wants employment tax records, including W-4s, for at least 4 years after the fourth-quarter filing. Most employers keep the whole payroll file 4 years.
How long should I keep bank statements?
There is no federal period for household bank statements. Keep any statement that supports income or a deduction on your return for that return’s IRS window, usually 3 years from filing. Others can be shredded once you have checked them against your records. Shred them rather than recycle them, since they show account numbers and your address.
How long should I keep home purchase and improvement records?
The IRS says to keep records relating to property until the period of limitations expires for the year you sell or otherwise dispose of it. In practice, keep closing papers and improvement receipts for as long as you own the home, then for at least 3 years after you file the return that reports the sale.
How long do employers keep personnel files?
The EEOC requires employers to keep all personnel and employment records for 1 year. If an employee is involuntarily terminated, keep that person’s file 1 year from the termination date. If a charge is filed, keep the relevant records until the charge and any lawsuit based on it are finally resolved.
Can I recycle old records instead of shredding them?
Not if they carry names, account numbers, Social Security numbers or health details. Curbside recycling leaves them readable. The FTC Disposal Rule gives burning, pulverizing or shredding as reasonable disposal for consumer report information. Shredded paper is still recycled, so you lose nothing. At our office 100 percent of the shred goes to recycling after cross-cut shredding.
What does it cost to shred a box of expired records?
At our Tewksbury drop-off, paper is 99 cents a pound, and a full banker’s box weighs about 30 pounds, so one box is about $29.70. Every job adds $34.90 in per-job fees, which covers the Certificate of Destruction paperwork and recycling. One box comes to $64.60. At 10 or more large boxes the rate is $20 a box.
Should I keep the Certificate of Destruction?
Yes. Keep it with your retention log or with the list of what was in the boxes. It shows when the records were destroyed and by whom, which answers an auditor, a client or a future employee who asks what happened to an old file. Many offices keep certificates at least as long as the longest period on their schedule.
Sources
- IRS, How long should I keep records (checked November 2026)
- IRS, Employment tax recordkeeping (checked November 2026)
- U.S. Department of Labor, Fact Sheet 21: Recordkeeping requirements under the FLSA (checked November 2026)
- EEOC, Recordkeeping requirements (checked November 2026)
- USCIS, M-274 Handbook, Retaining Form I-9 (checked November 2026)
- New Hampshire RSA 279:27, Records (NH General Court) (checked November 2026)
- New Hampshire RSA 21-J:29, Limitations on assessment (NH General Court) (checked November 2026)
- New Hampshire RSA 508:4, Personal actions (NH General Court) (checked November 2026)
Retention period over? Shred it properly
Bring your expired boxes to Tewksbury any weekday, or book a pickup from your home or office. 99¢ a pound, a Certificate of Destruction for your retention log, and the paper shredded at our office just south of the New Hampshire line.
New Hampshire Document Shredding
1215 Main Street, Unit 115, Tewksbury, MA 01876. Route 38 near I-495, about 15 minutes from the Salem and Pelham line. Free parking out front.
Monday to Friday, 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. Witnessed sessions and pickups outside these hours by appointment.
- Drop-off: 99¢ per pound, walk in on weekdays
- Pickup: same shredding rates plus a zone fee, by appointment
- Witnessed: $1.99 per pound, $100 minimum, by appointment
New Hampshire Document Shredding · 1215 Main Street, Unit 115, Tewksbury, MA 01876 · (978) 636-0301 · Monday to Friday, 10 a.m. to 5 p.m.