On page 109 of Take Control of Your Paperless Office, Second Edition there’s a link to the IRS’s Recordkeeping for Individuals page. For unknown reasons, the IRS has removed Publication 552 from its site.
To learn what the IRS suggests in terms of preserving documentation, read the Recordkeeping topic. Of special note: the IRS accepts electronic copies of documents and even permits you to destroy paper originals, as long as certain criteria are met. For details, see IRS Bulletin No. 1997–13, specifically Revenue Procedure 97-22, which starts on page 9. (This information used to be much easier to find, and I wish it still were!) Obviously, this applies only to U.S. taxes—for other countries, check with your tax authorities.
We’ll update this information in the book the next time we update it.