What Records Must I Keep? Irish Revenue's Requirements in Plain English

"How long do I need to keep this stuff?" is the question every business owner asks before binning a box of receipts. The Irish answer is six years from the end of the relevant accounting period — but the more useful question is what to keep, not just how long.

The 6-year rule

Section 886 of the Taxes Consolidation Act 1997 requires you to keep "all such linking documents" for at least 6 years from the end of the chargeable period to which they relate. For a company with a 31 December year-end, 2026 records must survive until at least 31 December 2032.

If a return is filed late, the 6 years run from the date of filing — not the year-end. Late filers effectively keep records longer.

What counts as a record?

Anything that supports a figure in your accounts, VAT return, payroll return or income tax return:

• Sales records: invoices issued, till rolls, POS daily Z-readings, sales journals, contracts, delivery notes
• Purchase records: supplier invoices, receipts, credit notes, statements, purchase orders
• Bank records: statements (every account), credit-card statements, merchant processor reports (Stripe, SumUp, Square)
• VAT records: VAT3 returns, RTD, VAT control account, EU import/export documentation, reverse-charge memos
• Payroll records: payslips, PSR submissions, RPNs, contracts of employment, expense claims, BIK calculations
• Asset records: purchase invoices, depreciation/capital allowance schedules, disposal records
• Stock records: stocktake sheets, valuation methodology notes, write-off documentation
• Cash records: petty cash logs, cash banking sheets, till reconciliations
• Reconciliations: bank, VAT, payroll, debtor and creditor reconciliations at each period-end
• Contracts and agreements: client contracts, supplier agreements, leases, loans

Digital records are fine — with conditions

Revenue accepts digital records provided they are:

• Legible — readable when produced
• Accessible — produceable to Revenue within a reasonable timeframe
• Unaltered — not subsequently modified (cloud audit trails help here)
• Complete — every transaction documented, not a sample

This means you can throw away the paper if your scans are organised, backed up and searchable. We recommend Dext or Hubdoc for invoice capture, with everything flowing into Xero or Sage and a secondary cloud backup.

The records most often missing at audit

1. Cash takings detail. Daily Z-readings, cash banking sheets and till variance logs are often patchy. Revenue treats gaps as undeclared sales.
2. Reverse-charge VAT memos. Construction principals routinely fail to document the reverse-charge treatment on subbie invoices.
3. BIK calculation backing. Company vehicles, health insurance, preferential loans — BIK was calculated five years ago, but the worksheet is gone.
4. Mileage logs. Self-employed claims for vehicle expenses without a contemporaneous log are routinely disallowed.
5. Expense receipts. Faded thermal-paper receipts after three years. Always scan immediately.
6. Pre-trading expenditure. Claimed at start-up but no underlying invoices kept.
7. Director/proprietor's personal expense splits. Where personal and business overlap (phone, vehicle, home office), the apportionment rationale is missing.

A practical filing structure

What if records are missing?

Revenue can raise assessments based on best-estimate where records are inadequate, and the burden shifts to you to prove the assessment is wrong. Always better to reconstruct from third-party sources (bank statements, supplier copies) than to have nothing.

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