Acceptable "Receipts" for Tax Audit Purposes

[Wesley Pittman]

Hi,

Right now I only own one investment property and find myself already spending more time than I would like cataloguing my monthly utility receipts for the property. I deduct these expenses and want to have proof of the expense in the instance of an audit. For the folks that are tax savvy or have been audited, I wanted to know if just submitting an annual statement from the utility providers is acceptable in audit or if I need each individual receipt? In terms of time efficiency and working on growing the scale of my portfolio, I would much rather just print out one sheet a year showing how much I spent on each property for that utility rather than catalog a receipt each month.

Thanks,

Wes

[Steven Hamilton II]

You should keep the receipts and you can save them in a bookkeeping system like quickbooks or Xero.  I recommend holding onto scans of the receipts. An annual statement should suffice just fine. But they want to know that it was paid.