Your company must maintain proper records of its financial transactions and retain the invoices, vouchers or other supporting documents.
For more information on basic record keeping, you may wish to refer to the Basic Record Keeping Guide For Small Businesses.
For accounting records and supporting documents relating to Year of Assessment (YA) 2007 and the earlier YAs, your company must retain the records for a period of seven years from the relevant YA.
For YA 2008 and each subsequent YA, the record-keeping period has been reduced from seven to five years.
Examples:
Companies with December financial year-end
| YA |
Records for period |
To keep up to |
Remarks |
| 2002 |
1 Jan 2001 to 31 Dec 2001 |
31 Dec 2008 |
Seven years |
| 2008 |
1 Jan 2007 to 31 Dec 2007 |
31 Dec 2012 |
Five years |
Companies with non-December financial year-end, e.g. 30 Jun
| YA |
Records for period |
To keep up to |
Remarks |
| 2002 |
1 Jul 2000 to 30 Jun 2001 |
31 Dec 2008 |
Seven years |
| 2008 |
1 Jul 2006 to 30 Jun 2007 |
31 Dec 2012 |
Five years |