New York employer record retention requirements run from one year to eighteen years depending on the document. State law sets a six-year floor for payroll and wage records, an eighteen-year rule for workplace injury and illness records, and federal statutes layer additional deadlines on top. Where two rules cover the same record, the longer period controls.
Quick Reference: How Long to Keep Each Record
- Payroll and timekeeping records: 6 years (New York Labor Law)
- Signed wage notices and acknowledgments: 6 years (Labor Law Section 195)
- Job applications and hiring records, all applicants: 1 year from the record or personnel action
- Form I-9: 3 years from hire date or 1 year after termination, whichever is later
- Workplace injury and illness records: 18 years (New York Workers’ Compensation Law)
- OSHA 300 Log: 5 years
- Employee benefits and ERISA plan records: 6 years after filing; pension records effectively indefinite
- Employment tax records (W-2, W-4, deposits): 4 years (IRS)
- Unemployment insurance records: Current year plus 3 preceding years (12 NYCRR 308.3)
- FMLA records: 3 years
- Records tied to a pending discrimination charge or lawsuit: Until final disposition
Payroll, Timekeeping, and Wage Notices
New York Labor Law requires every employer to keep payroll records for six years. Those records must include each employee’s name, address, Social Security number, wage rate, hours worked, gross and net wages, and all deductions.1New York State Senate. New York Labor Law LAB Article 6 195 – Notice and Record-Keeping Requirements The six-year window matches New York’s statute of limitations for wage claims, so an employee can bring a claim covering the full period the records must exist.
The federal Fair Labor Standards Act sets a shorter floor: three years for basic payroll records and two years for supplementary records like time cards, work schedules, and wage-rate tables.2U.S. Department of Labor. Fact Sheet 21 Recordkeeping Requirements Under the Fair Labor Standards Act FLSA Because New York is longer, it controls.
Wage notices are their own category. At hire, you must give each employee a written notice with the pay rate and basis of pay, any allowances claimed toward minimum wage, the regular payday, and the employer’s name, address, and phone number, in English and in the employee’s primary language. An updated notice is required within seven days of any change, unless the change appears on the next pay stub. The employee signs an acknowledgment confirming receipt in their identified primary language, and you keep those signed acknowledgments for six years.1New York State Senate. New York Labor Law LAB Article 6 195 – Notice and Record-Keeping Requirements Pay stubs, which must show dates covered, hours, wage rate, gross and net pay, and deductions, fall under the same six-year rule.
Workplace Injury and Illness Records
This is the retention deadline most New York employers get wrong. Under New York Workers’ Compensation Law Section 110, records of every workplace injury and illness must be kept for eighteen years, whether or not a formal claim was ever filed.3New York State Insurance Fund. Recordkeeping Requirements A minor injury logged today can develop into a compensable claim years later, and the original incident documentation is what defends against it.
OSHA runs on a shorter clock. The OSHA 300 Log of work-related injuries and illnesses must be kept for five years.3New York State Insurance Fund. Recordkeeping Requirements Both rules run simultaneously, and the eighteen-year New York requirement controls the underlying injury records.
Hiring Records and Form I-9
Federal regulations require all personnel and employment records, including applications, resumes, interview notes, and records tied to hiring decisions, to be kept for at least one year from the date of the record or the personnel action, whichever is later.4eCFR. 29 CFR Part 1602 Subpart C Recordkeeping by Employers The rule covers every applicant, including people who were never interviewed. Discarding rejected applications early is a common mistake; those records are your best evidence if a rejected applicant files a discrimination charge.
Form I-9 has a hybrid formula. For each current employee hired after November 6, 1986, keep the I-9 on file. After the employee leaves, retain the form for three years from the date of hire or one year after employment ended, whichever is later. The shortcut: if the employee worked for less than two years, keep the form three years from the start date; if longer than two years, keep it one year past the last day.5U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services. 10.0 Retaining Form I-9 I-9s may be stored on paper, microfilm, or electronically, but you must produce them within three business days of a government inspection request.6U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services. Retention and Storage
Benefits, Taxes, Unemployment, and FMLA
ERISA Section 107 requires plan records to be kept at least six years after the filing date of the documents based on the information they contain, covering plan documents, summary plan descriptions, Form 5500 filings, and the underlying records used to prepare them. ERISA Section 209 goes further for benefit determination: records sufficient to determine benefits due to each employee must be kept as long as they remain relevant to a potential claim.7Department of Labor. ERISA Advisory Council Written Statement – Recordkeeping in the Electronic Age In practice, pension records, vesting schedules, and individual account balances should be kept indefinitely, or at least until every participant and beneficiary has received full benefits. COBRA has no standalone retention statute, but because it operates within ERISA-covered health plans, election notices and premium records are commonly kept six years to match the ERISA floor.
The IRS requires all employment tax records, including W-2s, W-4s, deposit records, and copies of filed returns, to be kept for at least four years after the tax becomes due or is paid, whichever is later.8Internal Revenue Service. Employment Tax Recordkeeping This covers federal income tax withholding, Social Security and Medicare, and FUTA.
New York unemployment insurance records have their own rule. Under 12 NYCRR 308.3, quarterly combined tax returns, registration records, and all related forms filed with the state Department of Labor must be kept for the current calendar year plus the three preceding calendar years.9Legal Information Institute. New York Comp. Codes R. and Regs. Tit. 12 308.3 – Record Requirements
FMLA records must be kept for at least three years by covered employers. That includes leave requests, medical certifications, employer notices, premium payment records during leave, and documents describing paid and unpaid leave policies. Medical certifications must be kept in files separate from the general personnel file.10eCFR. 29 CFR 825.500 Recordkeeping Requirements Filing a doctor’s note in someone’s regular HR folder is a recurring audit finding.
When a Charge or Lawsuit Overrides the Schedule
Once a discrimination charge is filed under Title VII, the ADA, or GINA, standard retention periods stop applying to any record tied to the charge. All connected records must be preserved until final disposition, meaning the later of the deadline for the employee to file suit in federal court or the conclusion of any resulting litigation.11U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission. Summary of Selected Recordkeeping Obligations The same principle applies to complaints filed under the New York State Human Rights Law.
Scheduled destruction has to stop the moment the charge arrives. If normal practice is to shred applications after one year, that cycle must halt for every record even tangentially connected to the claim. Destruction after a charge lands, including accidental destruction through an automated retention system, creates spoliation exposure that agencies and courts treat harshly.
Electronic Storage and Secure Disposal
New York and federal law both allow electronic recordkeeping. FMLA regulations, which track the broader federal approach, permit records on microfilm or in automated data processing systems as long as they are clear, identifiable by date or pay period, and available for inspection, copying, and transcription on request.10eCFR. 29 CFR 825.500 Recordkeeping Requirements Cloud HR platforms, scanned PDFs, and other digital formats are fine, but the system has to actually produce legible records on demand. A software migration that stranded older files in an unreadable format is a compliance failure even if the data technically still exists on a server somewhere. Test retrieval before an investigator asks.
When a record’s retention period ends and no litigation hold applies, disposal still has rules. Files that include information from consumer reports, such as background checks, fall under the FTC’s Disposal Rule, which requires reasonable measures to prevent unauthorized access. Acceptable methods include shredding paper records, wiping electronic media, or using a qualified document destruction contractor.12Federal Trade Commission. Disposing of Consumer Report Information Rule Tells How Medical records from group health plans carry HIPAA obligations, and New York data security laws apply to records containing Social Security numbers and other personally identifiable information. A written retention-and-destruction policy is the strongest protection against both premature destruction and negligent retention.
After Closure or Acquisition
Closing the business does not end retention obligations. The IRS requires employment tax records to be kept at least four years after operations cease.13Internal Revenue Service. Closing a Business The six-year New York payroll rule also survives closure; the clock runs from when the records were created, not from the shutdown date.
In a merger or acquisition, the acquiring company generally inherits the predecessor’s recordkeeping obligations for the transferred employees. Under ERISA, the employer must still be able to access information sufficient to determine benefits after any transfer of plan records between recordkeepers.7Department of Labor. ERISA Advisory Council Written Statement – Recordkeeping in the Electronic Age Former recordkeepers are not required to hold prior records after a transfer, so the acquiring entity needs to confirm it received complete historical data, not just current account balances.
Penalties for Missing or Incomplete Records
New York Labor Law penalties for recordkeeping failures under Articles 6 and 19 run up to $1,000 for a first violation, up to $2,000 for a second, and up to $3,000 for a third or subsequent violation.14New York State Department of Labor. Guidelines Civil Penalties for Labor Law Violations These are separate from any wage liability and stack on top of back pay.
The larger exposure is in wage disputes themselves. Under Labor Law Section 198, a prevailing employee can recover the full underpayment, reasonable attorney’s fees, prejudgment interest, and liquidated damages equal to 100 percent of unpaid wages. For willful violations of the equal-pay provisions, liquidated damages can reach 300 percent.15New York State Senate. New York Labor Law Section 198 Costs Remedies When payroll records are missing, courts routinely accept the employee’s account of what they were paid, because the employer has nothing to contradict it.
The FLSA normally allows employees to recover two years of unpaid wages, but willful violations extend the limitations period to three years.16Office of the Law Revision Counsel. 29 U.S. Code 255 – Statute of Limitations An employer that deliberately fails to keep records, or destroys them to hide violations, is effectively inviting a willfulness finding.
Form I-9 violations carry their own federal penalties. ICE issues Notices of Intent to Fine for substantive errors, uncorrected technical failures, and knowing employment of unauthorized workers. The fine amount depends on the violation rate across all forms that should have been available for inspection, adjusted for business size, good faith, and violation history. Dollar amounts are adjusted annually under the Federal Civil Penalties Inflation Adjustment Act and published in the Federal Register.17U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement. Form I-9 Inspection Under Immigration and Nationality Act 274A
When two laws cover the same record, keep it for the longer period. When you’re not sure, keep it longer. Storage is almost always cheaper than the cost of not having a record when an investigator, judge, or claimant asks for it.