Paper-printed receipts and other documentation
Not all receipts need to be retained. If the amounts have been correctly pre-printed on the pre-completed tax return form, there is no need to retain any backup documentation. Thus, it is usually unnecessary to keep employees' pay slips or bank loan documentation for a long period.
We recommend that you do so,however, if you have claimed the tax credit for having paid domestic costs. The same applies for purchases and sales of immovable property.
As before, taxpayers are advised not to keep receipts for commuting costs between home and work. However, if a requirement to fill in a driver's logbook applies, the logbook should be retained for future reference.
Retention period: 6 years after close of assessment
Rather than enclose important receipts or similar documents when you send back Section One, we advise you to keep them safe for a while. The local tax office will ask you to send them if necessary.
If you add or correct something (e.g. claim a tax deduction for your costs for the production of income, or claim a tax credit for domestic costs), retain the receipts and documentation for 6 years after the close of the taxable year.
If you have made purchases of property or paid for capital improvements, it may be useful to retain the receipts and documentation for a longer time. If the property is sold, the receipts may be important when calculations are made to work out taxable capital gains or tax-deductible capital losses.
On the condition that paper printouts can be made at will, taxpayers may save their receipts in data files.
Recordkeeping requirement
Taxpayers are required to keep records if they hold and rent out rental property, operate a farming/forestry base, or operate a form of income-producing enterprise outside the legal obligation to have an accounting system.
Records are also to be kept on investment operations. This category of operations includes the holding of and trading with securities, investment-fund shares and similar assets.
In the context of your running any of the operations listed above, ’recordkeeping’ refers to making written notes and records that show precisely the dates of buying and selling company shares, including the amounts paid and received for them. You are not required to maintain an accounting ledger or book; it is sufficient to make sure that you keep the receipts and documentation in a safe place.
The recordkeeping requirement for typical investors can be taken care of simply by saving their asset-management firm's or bank's statements in chronological order.