Find the numbers for your tax return in a folder of statements and receipts

Interest paid, charity donations, a contractor's invoice from March: how to pull the figures you need out of a year's PDFs, bank exports and scanned receipts, without uploading them anywhere.

Tax season is mostly a search problem. The numbers are all somewhere: in bank statements, a mortgage letter, invoices, a pile of scanned receipts. The hard part is finding the one line that says how much mortgage interest you paid, or proving the date of a donation.

📁 One folder per tax year

Before searching, gather copies into one folder, say "Tax 2026":

🏦 bank and card statements (PDF, or the CSV export your bank offers)
💼 payslips and year-end income statements
🏠 mortgage or loan statements
🧾 invoices you sent and received
📸 receipts: photographed or scanned is fine
✉️ letters from the tax office

Copies are enough; the originals stay where they are.

🔎 Ask for the line you need

Open AskFolder, drop the folder in, and ask in plain words. It reads everything in your browser; the files never leave your computer.

Ask	Finds
"mortgage interest paid this year"	the line in the annual mortgage statement
"charity donation receipt"	the receipt, with its date and amount
"invoice from the plumber"	the invoice, even if it's a photo
"total tax withheld"	the figure on the year-end income statement
"home office internet bill"	the bills, month by month

Each answer is the passage itself, with the file and page, so you can check the figure in context and note where it came from.

📸 Scanned receipts

Photos and scanned PDFs have no text until something reads them. AskFolder reads them on your computer with optical character recognition: the free version reads the first three, and Pro reads every scan and photo in the folder.

🧷 Keep the trail

When you find a figure, copy the passage with its citation ("Mortgage-annual-statement-2026.pdf, p. 2") into your notes or the email to your accountant. If anyone asks where a number came from, you can answer in seconds.

AskFolder finds what your documents say; it doesn't give tax advice. Which items you can claim is a question for your tax office's guidance or an accountant.