Friday, 5 September 2014

When can we destroy documents?


 
One of the most frequent questions that freelancers and business owners ask is for how long they must keep documents such as invoices, when do we have to discard them? As you know the tax authorities, as a general term, has 4 years to review the taxes so is that period of time enough to discard the documents? Below we will explain how it is not as simple computation time in the preservation of archives.


As a general rule, the retention period should be six years. This should be the term in relation to books, correspondence, documents and evidence, and counted from the last entry made ​​in the books. But it should be clarified that there are certain exceptions and the tax legislation requires us to retain certain documents for periods of time that may be even longer than the six years in question. The exceptions to the general rule are: 1. Tax review interruption. We must be attentive to interruptions because the period of time of 4 years that has the tax authorities to review the taxes can be interrupted either by an act of the company itself or by acts of the Administration. If the period is interrupted, the computation of the four years starts again causing the obligation of keeping the documents longer.
2. Compensation of losses with profits of future tax periods. If your company obtained negative results in some exercise and the losses were offset in subsequent years (allowing a period of up to fifteen years to do it), you must retain documentation of this compensation losses until you can review the last year in which the losses were compensated. This rule also applies to deductions made in subsequent years that are generated. 3. Assets depreciation You should keep all receipts and supporting documents for the acquisition of capital assets during the period they are amortized and not until they can be inspected and any of the years in which they have been applied. it should be noted that it is advisable to file separated the invoices of capital assets acquisition and the invoices of current goods and services and the latter can be eliminated where appropriate.
We know that you could be sick of having entire rooms of filed documents without knowing what to do with them, but proceed with caution when it comes to getting rid of your business documents.
For further details do not hesitate in contact VP Advisers.

No comments:

Post a Comment