Does the IRS accept digital receipts?

Short answer Yes. The IRS has accepted electronic records, including scanned paper receipts, since the 1990s. A digital copy has to be accurate, legible and complete, and you have to be able to find it and produce a readable copy if asked. Once you've confirmed the scan meets that bar, you can generally get rid of the paper.

What the IRS actually requires

The rules for keeping records electronically come from Revenue Procedure 97-22 (in Internal Revenue Bulletin 1997-13). It's written for "electronic storage systems," but it boils down to a few practical requirements:

• Accuracy. The digital copy has to be a faithful reproduction of the original, with nothing altered or left out.
• Legibility. Someone has to be able to read every letter and number on it, both on screen and printed out.
• Retrieval. You need some way to find a specific receipt, such as by date, vendor or amount, and produce it.
• Integrity. Reasonable controls to stop records being lost, changed or deleted by accident, which in practice means backups.

The same procedure says you can destroy the paper originals once you've checked that your digital copies meet these standards. If a scan is blurry or cut off, keep the paper or rescan it.

What a usable receipt shows

Whether paper or digital, a receipt does its job when it shows:

• Who you paid: the vendor's name
• When: the transaction date
• How much: the total, with tax shown separately if possible
• What for: the items or service bought

A card statement covers the first three but not the fourth. That's why the IRS treats statements as proof of payment and receipts and invoices as proof of what you paid for.

For business meals, travel and gifts, Publication 463 also expects you to record the business purpose and, for meals, who you were with and your business relationship. That isn't printed on the receipt, so add it to the receipt's notes when you capture it, while you still remember.

Emailed receipts already count

A PDF invoice or an emailed order confirmation is already an electronic record. Don't print it. Keep the original file or email. Two common mistakes:

• Typing a receipt into a spreadsheet and deleting the original. A spreadsheet row is a summary, not a receipt. Keep the source.
• Leaving receipts scattered across an inbox. They exist, but nobody can find them in April. Searching for them and pulling them into one place is covered in how to find every receipt in Gmail.

How to scan a paper receipt you can trust

Phone photos are fine. Most rejected scans fail for boring reasons:

1. Capture the whole thing. Include the top (vendor name and address) and the bottom (total, payment method, date). For long receipts, take several photos or fold it in sections.
2. Flatten it and use good light. Crumpled thermal paper throws glare. Lay it flat on a dark surface and avoid shadows.
3. Do it the same day. Most register receipts are thermal paper, which fades. A gas station receipt can be blank by tax season.
4. Check before you shred. Zoom in. If you can't read the total and the date, the IRS can't either.
5. Write the business purpose on meals, travel and anything ambiguous.
6. Back it up. One phone's camera roll is not a record-keeping system. Keep copies somewhere that survives a lost phone.

How What Receipt? handles this

What Receipt? keeps the original image or PDF of every receipt. It doesn't keep just the numbers. It reads the vendor, date, total, tax and payment method from the image, so you can search and sort without typing anything in. Each receipt has a notes field for the business purpose. Your accountant gets a clean spreadsheet, and the original behind any row is one search away when someone asks for it.

Receipts already in your Gmail come in automatically, and the app keeps the attachment, or the email itself when there's no attachment. If you'd rather nothing leaves your computer, the Mac Privacy Edition does the same reading locally with Apple's on-device text recognition.

Questions

Is a photo of a receipt as good as the original?

Yes, as long as it's legible and complete. The IRS cares about whether the record is accurate and readable, not what format it's in.

Can I shred the paper after scanning?

Generally yes, once you've confirmed the scan is legible and complete and you have a backup. Some people keep the paper for large purchases, things under warranty or anything they're likely to return, which is a reasonable habit.

Does a credit card statement replace receipts?

No. A statement shows you paid a vendor. It doesn't show what you bought, and for most deductions the "what" is the point. Use statements to find receipts you're missing, not to replace them.

Do I need receipts for small purchases?

You need records for every expense you deduct. For travel, gifts and car expenses, Publication 463 requires a receipt or similar evidence for lodging and for anything $75 or more. Below that you still need a written record of the amount, date, place and purpose. In practice, snapping the receipt takes less effort than writing a log entry.

This guide is general information about US federal record-keeping, not tax advice. Ask a tax professional about your situation.