Print Out your Tax-Related Checks
July 7, 2009 by Allison Boyer
Filed under Jobs
I’m learning quickly that everything in this world costs something. Every when it doesn’t cost something for another person to produce, they charge you for it.
There was a mix up with one of my estimated tax payments from last year. It’s easy enough to clear up – I just need a copy of the canceled check. Like with most banks, my checks aren’t included with my bank statement. You can see them online, though. Good enough, right?
Image: sxc.hu
Wrong. Because they apparently don’t keep records online back that far. I went to the bank and talked to an incompetent teller, who said they don’t keep them at all.
Ok, now I know that’s wrong. She just didn’t know the answer and told me the quickest thing to get me out of her hair. So, since then I’ve found that they scan and archive every check, but you can only view and print it yourself for three months. After that, it is archived.
And they charge a fee to retrieve it from the archive. There are even more fees if you want a copy sent to your house or faxed to you. That, I understand. A fee to see a digital copy of a check though? Come on. Even if someone has to manually go into the database and find the check, it really shouldn’t take more than a few minutes. Is that time worth what they’re charging me? No way.
Moral of the story – print out copies of canceled checks that relate to your taxes (and anything else super important). Even if copies are available online, they probably won’t be forever…and then you’ll pay for it.
Allison, I’ve been doing online banking for a number of years now. My bank quit sending back canceled checks at least 8 years ago, so I’ve been in the habit of downloading an electronic copy of all of my canceled checks for a long time. I store these as BMP files (which is what my bank provides) on my hard disk for a year and then offload them to CDs fairly frequently. I normally don’t print them out, but of course I have the electronic source in case I need a hard copy for some reason.
At the present time, all of the major banks have become exceedingly greedy about every single service they provide. Many consumer organizations have been advertising this fact, from Consumers’ Union to AARP. In spite of the U.S. Congress’s attempts to further regulate the banking industry–most recently, new legislation about credit cards– I haven’t yet seen anything about attempts to curtail banks’ gouging in other areas of service, even though it appears that many people have been complaining about outrageous fees.
Thanks for reminding everyone that, whether or not they are self-employed, they should not take for granted their dealings with financial institutions.
Lynn G.