In a gov tax audit all proof is via paper evidence.
A canceled paper check is your best defense.
Jon
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Evidence of money and proof of transactions extend far beyond a cheque stub these days, and have done for decades.
Physical check/cheque plus the transaction records kept by the bank is both convenient and definitive.
On one occasion, my "auto club" (road side assistant) claims I did not paid the annual club fee. After multiple phone calls failed to resolve the problem, I went to the bank. The bank faxed them front and back of the check image confirming that it matches the bank's record of transaction -- the back of the check has the endorsement and the date and bank id where the auto-club deposited the payment. There is no more argument. They credited my payment.
On another occasion, I had to pay a "pre-payment" during pre-admission tests (usually a week before admission to hospital for non-emergency)... Long story short, they billed me again -- not a small amount, surgery is not cheap.
- I contested, they want proof of payment ...
- I forwarded the pre-payment receipt email they send me (containing the jpg image of receipt) back to them.
- They say "any body can cut and paste, show me your credit card statement...
- So I show them the credit card statement showing the charge on my card matching the emailed receipt.
- They say: "...you might have rejected the charge..."
- So I show them the following month's credit card receipt - no credit for rejected charges
That went on for over 6 months before final resolution to my favor.
I suspect the problem started because the patient was my wife and not me. When I made the pre-payment, somehow it was credited to me as a new future-patient and not my wife (then current patient with an established account). Then to complicate matter, they were acquired by and merged with another hospital around that time.
I don't trust digital records kept by others. I suspect the hospital never exported the old database records to the new hospital's system. We used to be able to logon to the old hospital's site to view prior stuff done like visits, blood test results, pathology reports, so on. Post merger, the new logon has nothing prior -- she is a new patient.
Good that I saved the pdf of the most important things. In a discussion me and my wife had with the physician, I was able to show her (the physician) a print of the old cat-scan pathology report so as to point out certain changes. That a cat-scan was done 3 or 4 years ago was unknown to the physician. Seeing that printout, she (the physician) went to another room (I assume to access the old system), came back with more details on that cat-scan. We were all glad I had that old printout. Now we have an old cat scan to compare to the new.
One can be too easily erased when one's life has no physical evidence of existence.