We're in the process of moving from QuickBooks Desktop (with payroll subscription) to QuickBooks Online (with payroll subscription). 

We've been using QuickBooks Desktop since 2007, so have many years of payroll data in our file, including for 2023 since we migrated to Online after running our last payroll for 2023. None of the historical payroll data migrated to QuickBooks Online. 

I understood this would be the case but thought from the marketing videos that we would be able to access our historical payroll data indefinitely using the Desktop product. In addition, I thought we wouldn't need to maintain subscriptions for both Desktop and Online because that just doesn't make sense, right?

Apparently it makes sense to Intuit because I just got off the phone with Desktop support who informed me that both our Desktop and associated Desktop payroll subscriptions need to remain active if I'm going to file our annual tax forms for 2023 and then indefinitely if I want to access historical payroll data.

Is this true? We have the historical QuickBooks file on our server. Once we get through the 2023 tax filing season is there a no-cost way for us to look into the historical file for research purposes, especially regarding historical payroll?

Thanks!