Federal law requires every U.S. employer to keep a completed Form I-9 for each employee for at least three years after the date of hire, or one year after the employee stops working, whichever date is later.1Office of the Law Revision Counsel. 8 USC 1324a – Unlawful Employment of Aliens That single sentence is the core of the I-9 retention requirements, but applying it correctly means running the math for every departing employee, storing the forms in a way auditors will accept, and knowing when the clock actually starts.
How to Calculate the Retention Date
The formula has two parts, and you use whichever produces the later date.2U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services. 10.0 Retaining Form I-9 Add three years to the employee’s first day of work. Add one year to the date employment ended. Compare the two. The later date is the earliest day you may dispose of the form.
A quick shortcut: if the person worked fewer than two years, the three-years-from-hire date always wins. If they worked more than two years, the one-year-from-termination date always wins. Two examples:
- Short tenure. Hired January 1, 2022, terminated June 30, 2023. Three years from hire is January 1, 2025. One year from termination is June 30, 2024. Keep the form until at least January 1, 2025.
- Long tenure. Hired January 1, 2015, terminated December 31, 2024. Three years from hire is January 1, 2018. One year from termination is December 31, 2025. Keep the form until at least December 31, 2025.
Most retention mistakes trace to skipping one side of that comparison. Employers who track only the three-year rule destroy forms for long-tenured employees too early. Employers who track only the one-year rule discard forms for short-tenured employees too early. Run both calculations every time.
Current Employees, Rehires, and Successor Employers
For a current employee, the retention period never starts because there is no termination date to plug in. The form stays in your files as long as the person works for you.
Rehires get a specific rule. If you rehire someone within three years of the date their original Form I-9 was completed, you can either complete a new Form I-9 or update the existing one using Supplement B, the reverification and rehire section.3U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services. Completing Supplement B, Reverification and Rehires Rehires after that three-year window always require a new form. When you use Supplement B, the retention clock resets to the new period of employment, calculated the same way, and the original form and Supplement B stay together in the file.
Mergers and acquisitions bring a choice. A successor employer can either treat continuing employees as new hires and complete fresh I-9s, or keep the existing forms from the prior employer.4U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services. Mergers and Acquisitions Keeping the existing forms is faster, but you inherit any errors on them. USCIS recommends reviewing each inherited form with the employee and correcting issues you find. Either way, the retention formula still applies to each employee. If you complete new forms, the effective date of the merger is the start date on those forms.
Where and How to Store the Forms
You can keep Forms I-9 on paper, microfilm, microfiche, electronically, or any combination.5U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services. Retention and Storage Format matters less than access. When a government agency requests your forms, you have three business days to produce them.6U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement. Form I-9 Inspection Paper forms should sit in a locked, secure location, since they contain sensitive personal information.
USCIS also recommends keeping I-9s separate from regular personnel files. Auditors have no reason to see performance reviews, medical records, or salary information, and separating the files keeps that material out of an inspection. A workable setup uses two files: one for current employees, one for terminated employees organized by calculated destruction date. When someone leaves, move their form and note the earliest permissible purge date on it.
Electronic Storage Rules
An electronic storage system has to meet specific federal requirements. It needs reasonable controls to prevent unauthorized changes or accidental deletion, plus an inspection and quality assurance program with regular evaluations.7eCFR. 8 CFR 274a.2 – Verification of Identity and Employment Authorization It also needs:
- A secure, permanent audit trail that logs every access, completion, update, or correction along with who did it and when.
- An indexing and retrieval function that locates individual forms quickly.
- The ability to print legible paper copies on demand for an inspecting officer.
The system cannot be subject to any licensing or contract term that would block a federal agency from accessing it at your premises. That restriction catches employers who buy third-party software without checking the license.
What Must Be Kept With the Form
For most employers, copying the identity and work-authorization documents an employee presents is optional. If you do copy them, you must keep the copies with the Form I-9 and produce them during an inspection. Copying policies also need to be consistent across employees, because copying for some workers and not others can look like discrimination.8U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services. Retaining Copies of Documents Your Employee Presents
E-Verify employers face a stricter rule. When an employee presents a U.S. passport, passport card, Permanent Resident Card, or Employment Authorization Document, you must copy the front and back and retain the copies with the Form I-9.9E-Verify. E-Verify Photo Matching E-Verify participants should also record or print the E-Verify case number for each corresponding Form I-9 and keep it on file.10E-Verify. E-Verify Records Retention and Disposal Fact Sheet
Employers using the DHS-authorized alternative procedure for remote document examination have their own added obligation. You must keep a clear, legible copy of the front and back of every document the employee presents remotely, store those copies with the Form I-9, and check the corresponding box on the form indicating an alternative procedure was used.11U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services. 4.5 Remote Document Examination The copies follow the same retention timeline as the form.
Fixing Errors Without Making Them Worse
Correcting a stored form the wrong way can increase your liability. Using correction fluid or erasing text looks like concealment.12U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services. Correcting Errors or Missing Information on Form I-9 The accepted method is to draw a single line through the wrong information, write the correct information nearby, and then initial and date the change. Attach a short written explanation of what was wrong and why you corrected it.
Only the employee, or their preparer or translator, can correct Section 1. Only the employer can correct Section 2 and Supplement B. If a form has enough errors that individual line-throughs would make it unreadable, redo the affected section on a new Form I-9 and staple it to the original. For substantial problems, complete a fresh form, attach it to the old one, and include a written explanation. Never backdate a correction. If you are filling in a missing date in Section 2, use today’s date and initial next to it.
Destroying Forms Once the Clock Runs Out
No federal regulation forces you to destroy Forms I-9 after the retention period expires, but keeping them past that point works against you. During an audit, inspectors may review every form on file, and old forms with old errors give them more fines to assess. A clean file that contains only the forms you are legally required to keep narrows the scope of any inspection.
Destruction has to protect the personal information the forms contain. Paper forms can be cross-cut shredded, pulped, or incinerated. Electronic records need a secure data-wipe method that prevents recovery. A regular purging schedule, tied to the destruction dates noted in your terminated-employee file, keeps expired forms from accumulating.
What Non-Compliance Costs
An I-9 audit usually starts when ICE serves a Notice of Inspection.6U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement. Form I-9 Inspection ICE typically requests payroll records, employee lists, and business documentation alongside the forms. Missing forms, or forms full of errors, trigger civil penalties that are adjusted for inflation each year.
For penalties assessed after July 3, 2025, the ranges are:
- Paperwork violations: $288 to $2,861 per form. This covers missing forms, incomplete sections, expired documents accepted during verification, and uncorrected substantive errors.13eCFR. 28 CFR Part 85 – Civil Monetary Penalties Inflation Adjustment
- Knowingly hiring unauthorized workers, first offense: $716 to $5,724 per worker.
- Second offense: $5,724 to $14,308 per worker.
- Subsequent offenses: $8,586 to $28,619 per worker.13eCFR. 28 CFR Part 85 – Civil Monetary Penalties Inflation Adjustment
The per-form math scales quickly. Fifty missing or defective forms puts paperwork exposure alone between $14,400 and $143,050. Minor technical errors, such as a date in the wrong format or a missing middle initial, are treated differently: you generally get 10 business days to correct them, and no fine is assessed if you do. The expensive violations are the substantive ones, particularly forms that are missing entirely, sections left blank, and verification based on unacceptable documents. A disciplined retention and purging system costs less than learning those numbers during an audit.