All records necessary to assess the taxpayer's tax liability should be retained for at least two years after the end of the relevant tax year. However, self-employed persons will need to keep records for six years.

 

We suggest that such records include : payslips, P60s, P11Ds, PAYE coding notices, interest received certificates, bank and building society statements and passbooks, dividend vouchers, etc., plus all the usual business records and home utility bills where part is claimed as business expense.

 

TIP : Where a taxpayer does not already have a reliable system for retaining personal tax data, then at the very least a separate labelled envelope folder for each tax year should be kept, with all papers relating to that year placed in it.

 

Basic books including, where relevant, cash books, petty cash books, purchases and sales books.

 

Advanced records including, where relevant, annual accounts, nominal ledger, sales ledger, bought ledger, a VAT account, etc.

 

Documents including, where relevant : sales invoices, purchase invoices, credit notes, debit notes, orders and delivery notes, till rolls, bank statements and paying in records, business correspondence, import and export documents, etc.

 

All records must be kept up to date and should contain sufficient detail to allow the accurate calculation of the VAT.

 

These records must be retained for at least six years.