From a tax perspective, if you don't get an official reporting document (W-2 or 1099-MISC) for the income you want to keep the pay stubs to support the income that you claim on your tax return, for the statutory review period (3 years). Otherwise, you want to keep the pay stubs long enough to verify the amounts reported against what appears on your W-2 or 1099-MISC (sometimes companies make mistakes on those documents), then you don't need them for tax purposes any longer since the W-2 or 1099-MISC contains what was reported to the IRS.