How Long to Keep Bank Statements
One year for most people, seven if you are self-employed, and permanently for the handful that prove something you will still care about in a decade. The useful question is not how long a statement lasts but how long somebody can ask you to prove what is on it.
Published 10 August 2026 · 8 min read
The short answer
Keep the last twelve months for everyday purposes. Keep anything that supports a tax return for as long as that return can be questioned: commonly three years in the US and around six in the UK, longer in both if the picture is complicated. Keep the small number that prove something permanent, such as a deposit that funded a house purchase, indefinitely.
This is a general guide and not tax or legal advice. The periods below are the ones most commonly cited by the revenue authorities themselves, but they change and they depend on your circumstances. Check the current guidance for your country before shredding anything you might need.
What actually decides the answer
Retention feels like a filing question and is really a question about challenges. A record is worth keeping for exactly as long as somebody can turn up and ask you to prove the thing it proves. After that window closes the paper has no job left to do.
That is why one answer cannot cover everybody. An employed person with one current account and no deductions is exposed to a short window. Somebody self-employed, claiming expenses, or running a company is exposed to a longer one, because the revenue authority has longer to open an enquiry and more to enquire about.
So work out what each statement is being kept as evidence of, and let that set the clock. Most statements are evidence of nothing in particular and can go after a year. A few are load-bearing.
The periods most often cited
| Record | United States | United Kingdom |
|---|---|---|
| Everyday bank statements | 1 year, once reconciled | 1 year, once reconciled |
| Anything supporting a tax return | 3 years from filing | 22 months after the end of the tax year |
| Self-employed or business records | 3–7 years depending on the claim | 5 years after the 31 January submission deadline |
| Company records | 7 years is the common practice | 6 years from the end of the accounting period |
| Substantial understatement of income | 6 years | Up to 20 years where behaviour is at issue |
| No return filed, or a fraudulent one | No limit | No limit |
| Proof of a large deposit or asset purchase | Keep while you own the asset | Keep while you own the asset |
The two columns rarely disagree by much in practice, because both are built on the same idea: an ordinary year closes quickly and an unusual one does not. Where they differ is the starting point. The US clock generally runs from when you filed; the UK clock runs from a fixed date after the tax year, which means an early filer and a late one are treated the same.
Bank statements specifically
A statement on its own is weak evidence and strong corroboration. It shows that money moved, when, and between whom: it does not show what it was for. That is why a statement is almost always kept alongside something else: an invoice, a receipt, a contract. The statement proves the payment happened; the other document proves what it bought.
The practical consequence is that a statement should be kept for as long as the document it corroborates. A receipt for a deductible expense is worth nothing if the payment behind it can no longer be shown, and vice versa. Filing them on different schedules is how people end up with half a pair.
Credit card statements follow the same logic and are asked about together for a reason. The difference between the two documents matters here: a card statement is a bill for a period rather than a record of an account balance, so what it evidences is slightly different, and the retention question is answered the same way regardless.
If you are self-employed or run a business
The window is longer, the volume is larger, and the statements matter more, because for a small business the bank account often is the accounting record. If the books were reconstructed from statements, which is what a catch-up or clean-up job means, then the statements are not corroboration, they are the primary source.
- Keep the whole period, not the interesting parts. A year with three months missing invites the question of what was in them.
- Keep business and personal separate, and keep both if they were ever mixed. A personal account used for business expenses becomes a business record for that purpose.
- Keep the statements behind every reconciliation, since a reconciled set of books is only as good as the statements it was reconciled against.
- Keep them past the point the business closes. The window does not shut because the company did.
Keeping them digitally, and the format trap
Digital copies are accepted by the revenue authorities in both countries and have been for years, provided they are complete, legible and unaltered. Almost nobody keeps paper any more and there is no reason to.
The trap is that a folder of PDFs satisfies the letter of that and fails the purpose of it. Seven years of monthly statements is eighty-four documents. Finding one payment in them means opening each in turn, which is the reason people give up and say they cannot find something they demonstrably have.
Keep the original statement whatever else you do. A converted copy is an index, not a substitute: the file the bank issued is the one that carries its authority, and a spreadsheet made from it does not inherit that.
Alongside the originals, a searchable copy turns eighty-four documents into one sortable list. Converting each statement to a spreadsheet gives you real date and amount cells, so you can filter a year to one payee or total a category across the whole archive. Every row is reconciled against the statement's own closing balance first, so you find out at the point of filing whether a page went astray rather than years later when somebody asks.
Make the archive searchableWhat keeping them has to mean to be useful
- Complete periods. Statements chain, each opening where the last closed, so one missing month breaks the continuity of everything after it.
- Readable without the bank. Anything behind a login you will lose when you close the account is not archived, it is borrowed.
- Named so you can find them. Account and period in the filename beats whatever the bank called the download.
- Backed up somewhere separate. One copy on one laptop is one hardware failure from being no copies.
When you can throw them away, and how
Once the relevant window has closed and nothing on the statement supports a claim still open, it can go. Shred paper rather than binning it: a statement carries an account number, a sort code or routing number, an address and a spending pattern, which is more than enough to be worth somebody's time.
Delete digital copies properly too, which means emptying whatever the operating system calls its recycle bin and checking the cloud folder that has been quietly syncing them. Statements are one of the more valuable things in an ordinary person's file store and they are rarely treated that way.
If you did not keep them
Common, and usually fixable. Banks hold their own records for longer than most people keep theirs, typically five to seven years and often longer for closed accounts, so the statement you shredded is frequently still retrievable.
Getting old statements from a closed account covers how to ask, what it tends to cost, how long it takes, and what to do when the bank has been taken over or no longer exists. It is worth starting that process early if there is a deadline attached, because the timescales are measured in weeks rather than days.
Frequently asked questions
How long should I keep bank statements for taxes? For as long as the return they support can be questioned. In the US that is commonly three years from filing, extending to six where income was substantially understated and indefinitely where no return was filed. In the UK it is 22 months after the end of the tax year for most individuals and five years after the 31 January deadline if you are self-employed. Check the current guidance for your circumstances rather than treating those as fixed.
Do I need to keep paper, or are digital copies enough? Digital copies are accepted in both the US and the UK provided they are complete, legible and unaltered. The practical requirement is that you can produce the whole period on request, which means a download you can still open without logging in to an account you may have closed.
How long do banks keep statements themselves? Typically five to seven years, and often longer, because their own regulatory obligations outlast your filing ones. That is why a statement you did not keep is usually still obtainable, though rarely instantly, and sometimes for a fee.
Is there any reason to keep a statement forever? A few. Anything evidencing the source of a large deposit, a deposit on a property, a gift that might later be questioned, or a payment into a long-lived asset is worth keeping while you still hold the thing it relates to. These are a handful of pages out of years of statements, which is what makes keeping them cheap.
What about credit card statements? The same reasoning applies: keep them as long as whatever they substantiate remains open to challenge, and a year otherwise. The one difference worth knowing is that a card statement is a bill for a period rather than a record of an account, so it evidences what you were charged rather than what you held.
Can I just keep the CSV instead of the statement? No, and this is worth being clear about. A converted file is a copy you made, not a document the bank issued, so it does not carry the same weight if the records are ever examined. Keep the original and treat any conversion as an index that makes the archive searchable.