US records retention schedules
All the records retention obligations in the United States of America

Know how long to store data in the 52 states and territories of the US
All the information you need to confidently decide how long to store your data in all the United States. Whether on US Federal or state level. The US data retention schedules are up to date and updated frequently. Combine various country schedules to establish your global data retention schedule. All in a handy Excel format or through our API. This way, you can adjust, add or export elements to share with your IT or business. You will also be able to combine different schedules, for example you could merge all ‘accounts and legal records’ data retention periods from your country schedules into one Excel.
Records retention topics
The US Federal and state data retention schedules include the following data retention periods:
- Accounts and legal records
- Tax records
- HR records
- Health and safety records
- Environmental records
- Transport records
- Personal data and privacy
- Agriculture industry
- Alcohol, spirits and tobacco industry
- Automotive industry
- Critical infrastructure industry
- Construction industry
- Defense, military and dual use goods industry
- Financial services industry
- Food industry
- Healthcare services industry
- Hospitality industry
- Leisure industry
- Manufacturing industry
- Media and entertainment industry
- Oil and gas industry
- Professional services industry
- Real estate services industry
- Retail industry
- Telecommunications industry
- Veterinary industry


Why does records retention matter in the United States?
The US has the world’s most elaborate and longstanding system of records retention rules and obligations. With the ballot vote in favour of the California Proposition 24, Consumer Personal Information Law and Agency Initiative (2020) the US now will have the first privacy law in its biggest state which requires companies not to keep personal information longer than necessary and an Agency which has to enforce this rule. Data retention has become of key importance in order to get control over your data and comply with the California Consumer Privacy Act (CCPA). The California Proposition 24 says about data retention: s178.130 “[…] and shall not further disclose the personal information, retain It longer than necessary for purposes of verification, or use It for unrelated purposes.” and s198.100(3) CCPA“A business that controls the collection of a consumer’s personal information shall, at or before the point of collection, Inform consumers as to: […] the length of time the business intends to retain each category of personal Information […]“. Companies will need to ask themselves: what is the most optimal data retention period my company could implement before it gets into trouble?
What you will learn from our US records retention schedules
The filerskeepers US data retention schedules contain:
- Tens of thousands of data retention periods that could be relevant to your company
- Information about who should keep what data, for which time period, starting when, it is a maximum or minimum period
- All with a legal reference and a link to the official legal source
- Printer friendly format, designed for A4 printing

All US states available
We have US Federal and all US states available (in December 2020):

If you need more than a few countries
If you are active in over 10 countries both in and outside the US, we recommend our Unlimited subscription. With Unlimited, you will receive access to all currently published retention schedules, and all new ones as well! If you are curious as to which countries we are planning to publish next, please see our roadmap. For more information about our one-off schedules and subscription models please see pricing.
About our retention schedules
filerskeepers helps companies decide which retention period to choose per system or document category. We provide our customers with insight into the legal maximum and minimum retention periods for each country relevant to them. This helps companies to justify why they are storing data and for how long.