Elegant File ExplorerOrganize tax documents by year: ready packs
Tax paperwork arrives all year and gets filed all at once — in a panic, in April. The payroll portal posts a W-2 called document.pdf. The brokerage exports 1099_final (2).pdf. The bank drops estatement_749.pdf. Twelve months of forms sit in Downloads with names that tell you nothing, and the filing you keep meaning to do becomes an afternoon you cannot spare.
You do not have to build a filing system from scratch. Elegant File Explorer ships ready-made packs by country: pick yours, and the season’s paperwork sorts itself into a folder by year, tagged, on your own PC — files moved, never deleted. This is about organization, not tax advice. The app sorts the paper; what the paper means is between you and your accountant.
Pick your country in the gallery#
Open the Recipe Gallery (the wizard offers it with “How about starting from a ready-made recipe?”). By default it shows the packs for your language and region under “✨ For you” — so an English-speaking reader sees the US and UK packs first. Flip to “All regions” and every country’s pack is there, because these recipes trigger on the words each country’s paperwork actually prints. A W-2 says “W-2”, not “holerite”; a Spanish form says “modelo 303”. Same engine, local vocabulary.
USA: Taxes & Paperwork#
The USA: Taxes & Paperwork pack handles the American season end to end. The recipes that carry it:
- USA: tax forms (W-2, 1099) recognizes the season’s forms by name — W-2, 1099, 1040, “tax return”, IRS — and also by the strong markers inside a PDF’s text, so a form the portal saved as
document.pdfis caught by what it prints (“Form 1099”, “Internal Revenue Service”). It files each intoDocuments\Taxes\{year}, tags it Tax, and sets a reminder for the filing deadline. It watches your Downloads and Desktop. - USA: pay stubs by month files pay stubs and earnings statements into
Documents\Pay stubs\{year}\{month-name}, tagged Pay stub — proof of income, always to hand. - USA/UK: bank statements files PDF statements (“statement”, “e-statement”, “account summary”) into
Documents\Bank statements\{year}\{month-name}, tagged Statement. - USA: health insurance (EOBs and claims) gathers the EOBs and claims (“explanation of benefits”, “insurance claim”, “copay”) into
Documents\Health insurance\{year}, tags them Insurance, and sets a follow-up reminder — because arguing with an insurer is hard enough without hunting for the paper. - USA/UK: receipts and order confirmations files receipts and order confirmations into
Documents\Receipts\{year}\{month-name}, tagged Receipt.
United Kingdom: HMRC & Bills#
For a UK reader, the United Kingdom: HMRC & Bills pack does the same job in British vocabulary:
- UK: Self Assessment (HMRC) recognizes the paperwork by name — HMRC, “self assessment”, SA302, UTR, “tax year” — and by the markers inside a PDF (“HM Revenue”, “Self Assessment”). It files into
Documents\Taxes UK\{year}, tags it HMRC, and sets a deadline reminder. It watches Downloads and Desktop. - UK: payslips, P60s and P45s files payslips and the P60/P45/P11D forms into
Documents\Payslips\{year}, tagged Payslip — ready when a mortgage or a visa asks for them. - UK: household bills (council tax, utilities) gathers council tax, the TV licence, utility bills and tenancy documents into
Documents\Household\{year}, tags them Household, and sets a bill reminder — proof of address on hand when the bank asks.
What each pack does, at a glance#
| Region | Pack | Where the paperwork lands |
|---|---|---|
| United States | USA: Taxes & Paperwork | Documents\Taxes, Pay stubs, Bank statements, Receipts — by year |
| United Kingdom | United Kingdom: HMRC & Bills | Documents\Taxes UK, Payslips, Household — by year |
| Spain | Spain: AEAT & Paperwork | Documents\Impuestos, Nóminas, Facturas — by year |
| Latin America | Latin America: SAT & AFIP | Contabilidad\CFDI, AFIP, Recibos de sueldo — by year |
| Brazil | Freelancer & Finance · Accounting | Fiscal\IR, Notas, Guias — by year |
The Spanish, Latin American and Brazilian packs are all one click away under “All regions” if your paperwork spans borders — a common case for expats and cross-border freelancers.
Reminders, not advice#
Two of these recipes set a reminder when they file — a deadline nudge on the form, a follow-up on an insurance claim. That is a feature of the app, not a recommendation: the reminder shows up on the bell in the app and on a card inside the window while it is open. What the deadline is, and how long to keep anything, is not something this app decides — it only puts the documents where you can find them. If a reminder matters to your workflow, our guide on tags and reminders shows how they behave.
How this differs from filing invoices, or filing for clients#
Two neighboring jobs are easy to confuse with this one.
If your question is how the app recognizes a document that arrived badly named — reading the text inside the PDF, even a scanned one, with built-in OCR that runs 100% on your PC — that is its own topic. Our guide on automatically organizing invoices and receipts is the deep dive on filing by content. This post is one level up: the ready country packs that put a whole tax year in order without you wiring anything.
And if you file other people’s tax documents for a living — a bookkeeper or accountant with many clients — the shape is different: a self-filing folder per client, delivered to a portal. That is file automation for accountants. The packs here are for your own paperwork, sorted by year.
Nothing is deleted, everything is reversible#
The reason you can trust a rule with a tax form is that it cannot lose one. “Simulate effect” shows the full preview — every move — before a single file budges. Every run is logged, and “Undo” reverses it. Moving is moving, never deleting; a form filed to the wrong year is one click from home. And because everything is local, your financial documents never leave your computer — no upload, no account.