The first mortgage bill of the year typically includes tax statements for the prior year. Etc.
Is this a weird american thing? At least here in the UK mortgage interest deductions are only applicable to businesses.
It was, which is why your comment starting with "As a business" was so bizarrely off-topic.
> Is this a weird american thing? At least here in the UK mortgage interest deductions are only applicable to businesses.
Yes. American homeowners can under most circumstances treat their mortage interest payments as tax deductable.
What do you mean by off-topic? Businesses receive utility bills too, and might genuinely be required to keep records of those.
As far as I can tell, barring some very special circumstances, individuals never need to keep such records.
This is blatantly false. Unless paying taxes is a "very special circumstance."
People don't want these records at hand purely for their own amusement, which seems to be the assumption you're operating under here.
> This is blatantly false. Unless paying taxes is a "very special circumstance."
I’ve certainly never needed to pull up my utility bills while paying taxes as a private person.
It really feels like you’re just coming up with stuff, utility bills aren’t normally tax deductible (unless you are a business). There’s no reason you’d ever need them for the taxman any more than your grocery story receipts.
> In what situation will an individual need to supply their utility bills to the taxman during an audit?
The bills would be useful if they expensed some of those payments, deducted them, or whatever. With a record number of people working from home, some portion of those expenses might be tax deductible for some people, some people might receive reimbursements from an employer, etc.
(nobody said anything about an audit)
> I’ve certainly never needed to pull up my utility bills while paying taxes as a private person.
I think we can all agree that if you have never done this, it's unthinkable that anyone would ever do this.
Under IRS rules, some people who WFH can often deduct part of their home expenses, including utilities.
See IRS Form 8891 line 21, labelled "Utilities"
[1] https://www.irs.gov/publications/p936#:~:text=You%20can%20de....