{"id":9421,"date":"2018-02-12T13:28:22","date_gmt":"2018-02-12T12:28:22","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/tunal-stb.de\/retention-periods-and-destruction-of-accounting-records\/"},"modified":"2023-07-21T09:17:11","modified_gmt":"2023-07-21T07:17:11","slug":"retention-periods-and-destruction-of-accounting-records","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/tunal-stb.de\/en\/retention-periods-and-destruction-of-accounting-records\/","title":{"rendered":"Retention periods and destruction of accounting records"},"content":{"rendered":"

Retention periods – Destruction – Accounting records – Tax consultants – Hagen – Holzwickede – Kamen – L\u00fcnen<\/p>\n<\/div><\/div>[vc_single_image image=”5499″ img_size=”full”][ultimate_heading main_heading=”Aufbewahrungsfristen und Vernichtung von Buchhaltungsunterlagen” alignment=”left”][\/ultimate_heading][vc_separator style=”shadow”]

Certain retention periods apply to accounting records (cf. Section 147 AO). If necessary, a provision can be made in the annual financial statements for the future costs of storing these documents.<\/p>\n

Upon expiration of the statutory periods, the following documents in particular may be destroyed after December 31, 2017:<\/p>\n

10-year retention period:<\/strong><\/h4>\n

– Books, journals, accounts, etc., in which the last entry<\/strong> was made in 2007<\/strong> and earlier
\n– Annual financial statements, management reports, opening balance sheets and inventories prepared<\/strong> in 2007<\/strong> or earlier, and the documents required for their understanding
\n– Accounting documents (for example: invoices, notices, payment instructions, bank statements, payrolls, travel expense statements, entertainment receipts) from the year 2007<\/strong><\/p>\n

6-year retention period:<\/strong><\/h4>\n

– Wage accounts<\/strong> and documents (certificates) for the wage account with entries from 2011<\/strong> or earlier
\n– Other<\/strong> documents (for example: export or import documents, order books, bills of lading, expired loan agreements, insurance policies) and business letters from 2011<\/strong> or earlier.<\/p>\n

All<\/strong> documents that are relevant for understanding<\/strong> and verifying<\/strong> the record-keeping obligations must be retained; this applies both to documents in paper form<\/strong> and to all documents in the form of data<\/strong>, data sets and electronic<\/strong> documents that show that the regulatory requirements and their compliance have been implemented. Incoming electronic invoices, commercial and business letters or other significant documents must be kept unchanged in<\/strong> the format in which they were received (for example, in PDF or image format). They must not be deleted before the retention period expires.<\/p>\n

Conversion<\/strong> to another format is only permissible if machine evaluability (by the tax authorities) is not restricted and no changes are made to the content. The same applies to self-generated documents, such as outgoing invoices.<\/p>\n

If paper documents are converted into electronic documents (“scanned”)<\/strong>, the procedure must be documented, which ensures in particular that the content is identical to the original and that it is legible and complete.<\/p>\n

The retention periods also apply to the data relevant for tax and social security purposes in the company’s IT system<\/strong> (financial, asset and payroll accounting). During the retention period, access<\/strong> must be ….<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

(Read more, including comments on this topic (item 8), in our brief).<\/a><\/p>\n<\/div><\/div><\/div><\/div><\/div><\/div><\/section>

[vc_masonry_media_grid grid_id=”vc_gid:1521628541770-8b591df2-19f4-7″ include=”5553,5552,5551,5550,5549,5548″]<\/div><\/div><\/div><\/div><\/section>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Retention periods – Destruction – Accounting records – Tax consultants – Hagen – Holzwickede – Kamen – L\u00fcnen [vc_single_image image=\"5499\" img_size=\"full\"][ultimate_heading main_heading=\"Aufbewahrungsfristen und Vernichtung von Buchhaltungsunterlagen\" alignment=\"left\"][\/ultimate_heading][vc_separator style=\"shadow\"]Certain retention periods apply to accounting records (cf. Section 147 AO). If necessary, a provision can be made in the annual financial statements for the future costs of...","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[591,535,590],"tags":[598,595,605,601,593,594,602],"class_list":["post-9421","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-accounting-records","category-information-letter","category-retention-requirements","tag-accounting-documents","tag-accounting-records","tag-destruction","tag-payroll-accounts","tag-retention-period","tag-retention-periods","tag-tax-document"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/tunal-stb.de\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9421","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/tunal-stb.de\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/tunal-stb.de\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tunal-stb.de\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tunal-stb.de\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=9421"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/tunal-stb.de\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9421\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":9439,"href":"https:\/\/tunal-stb.de\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9421\/revisions\/9439"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/tunal-stb.de\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=9421"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tunal-stb.de\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=9421"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tunal-stb.de\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=9421"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}