HR Department: Helpful Hints for Filing and Retaining Your I-9 Forms

U.S. employers are required by law to verify the employment authorization of all workers they hire on or after November 6, 1986, for employment in the United States, regardless of the workers’ immigration status. This required authorization verification is done via the I-9 Form. Below are some best practices to ensure that your company is in compliance with the I-9 retention requirements:

Maintain your I-9’s separate from your personnel files – While this is not a requirement, it is always a good idea to maintain your I-9s in a separate file for two reasons: Supervisors or managers who have access to personnel files do not have a need for access to I-9 forms. These forms contain national origin, immigration status, marital status and other protected information that should only be accessible to a few individuals in the HR department. Secondly, should your organization ever be subjected to an I-9 audit, it would be much easier to pull an I-9 folder containing all of your I-9s rather than pull all of your personnel files and have to remove the I-9 form from each one.

File active employee I-9 forms alphabetically – These “active” I-9s should be maintained alphabetically by last name so they can be easily audited against a current payroll list. REMEMBER….all current employees should have an active I-9 on file, unless they were hired prior to November 6, 1986.

Create a separate folder for terminated employee I-9 forms – When an employee is terminated, pull his or her I-9 form from the active employees and determine the retention requirement before filing it with the terminated employee forms. Once the retention date is determined, file your terminated employee I-9s chronologically by retention date.

Determine the “Retain Until” date for terminated employee I-9s – All terminated employee I-9 forms must be retained until the later of: 1) three years after their date of hire; or 2) one year after their termination date. Once the retention date is determined, note that on the I-9 form and file it chronologically with the other terminated I-9 forms. Filing chronologically, will allow you to easily pull and shred the terminated employee I-9 forms that have gone beyond their retention date.