How Long to Keep Tax Records in Australia (ATO 5-Year Rule)

General information only. This is not tax or financial advice. Consult a registered tax agent for advice specific to your situation.

The short answer is 5 years from the date you lodge your tax return. That is the ATO’s standard rule for individuals, and it covers most receipts, invoices, income statements and logbooks.

The detail that trips people up is when the 5 years start. It is not the date on the receipt and not the end of the financial year — it is the day you lodge. And a handful of records, mostly ones connected to assets you still own, have to be kept much longer.

The standard rule: 5 years from lodgment

You must keep your written evidence for 5 years from the date you lodge the return it supports.

Lodge late and the clock starts late too. A return lodged two years after year-end keeps its records live for two years longer than one lodged on time.

Records you must keep for longer than 5 years

The 5-year rule assumes the record is finished with once the return is lodged. When a record keeps feeding into future returns, the ATO sets a later start date.

CGT assets: shares, crypto, investment property

Keep every record about the asset for as long as you own it, and then for 5 years after it is certain no CGT event can happen — in practice, 5 years after you sell or otherwise dispose of it.

This is the category most people throw away too early. The purchase contract, stamp duty, legal fees, broker contract notes and every capital improvement invoice set your cost base. If you bought a property in 2008 and sell it in 2030, you still need the 2008 settlement statement to work out the gain, and then for another 5 years after that. See the CGT cost base records checklist for what belongs in that file.

Depreciating assets

If you claim a deduction for the decline in value of an asset — a work computer, rental property fittings, business equipment — keep the records for 5 years from the date of your last claim for decline in value. For a rental property, that often means the depreciation schedule lives as long as the property does. The rental property record-keeping checklist covers the full set.

Losses you carry forward

If you make a loss and deduct it in a later year, keep the records you used to work it out until the review period for the return in which you finally deduct the loss has ended. The ATO’s own example: a business loss from 2017-18 deducted in the 2023-24 return must be documented until the 2023-24 review period is over.

The same logic applies to anything spread across several returns, such as borrowing expenses claimed over 5 years: keep the records until the review period for the last year you claim them has ended.

Disputes with the ATO

If you are in a dispute over an assessment, keep the records for the later of 5 years from the date you lodged and 5 years from the date the dispute is resolved.

Business records: a different start date

For businesses, including sole traders, most records must also be kept for 5 years — but the clock starts from when you prepared or obtained the record, or completed the transaction it relates to, whichever is later, not from lodgment.

Some business records have their own start date. FBT records, for example, run from the date you lodge the FBT return. Companies should check their other obligations too: the ATO notes that ASIC requires companies to keep records for 7 years.

Business records must be in English or able to be easily converted to English, and if you change software you must still be able to reconstruct the original data.

What counts as a record

A record is anything that shows the income you earned or the expense you paid. For a work-related expense claim, the ATO expects written evidence — usually a receipt or invoice — showing:

• the name of the supplier
• the cost
• what the goods or services were
• the date you paid
• the date the document was prepared

You also need a note showing how the expense relates to your work and how you split work use from private use.

A few rules worth knowing:

• Photos are fine. Paper or electronic records both count, including photos of receipts, as long as each copy is a true and clear copy of the original. You can throw the paper away once you have a clear copy.
• A bank statement alone is not enough. It doesn’t come from the supplier and doesn’t show what you bought. It can support a receipt but can’t replace one.
• English, mostly. Records for expenses incurred in Australia must be in English. A document for an expense incurred overseas can be in that country’s language, but the ATO may ask for a certified translation.

The $300 no-receipt rule ends after 2025-26

For the 2025-26 and earlier income years, you could claim total work-related expenses of $300 or less without full receipts, as long as you could show you spent the money and how you worked out the claim. Laundry of $150 or less had a similar exception inside that $300.

Those exceptions were repealed from the 2026-27 income year and replaced by an automatic standard deduction of up to $1,000 for eligible employees. It is not added on top: you get the higher of your itemised work-related expenses and the standard amount. So from 2026-27 onward:

• if your work expenses will come in under the standard amount, receipts for them add nothing to your deduction
• if you plan to itemise above it, you need full records for the whole claim, not just the amount above $1,000

The 5-year retention rule itself has not changed.

How to actually keep them

The ATO recognises any electronic device or app, and recommends backing electronic records up regularly. Three practical options:

• ATO app — myDeductions. The ATO’s own tool: it stores receipt photos, and you can upload the records to pre-fill your return in myTax or send them to your tax agent.
• A folder per financial year. Cloud storage or a physical box, labelled by year, with CGT and depreciating-asset records kept in a separate “keep until sold + 5 years” folder so they don’t get binned with the rest.
• Tax Vault. Our free organiser sorts receipts by financial year and category and exports a Tax Pack zip for your accountant. Files stay in your browser and are never uploaded — which also means you should export a copy, because clearing browser data removes them.

Whatever you use, the rule of thumb is the same: sort by the year you lodged, not the year on the receipt, and keep asset records separately for as long as you own the asset.