Invoice retentionconservation des factures
Invoices and accounting supporting documents must be kept for six years for tax purposes under article L. 102 B of the Tax Procedures Code, and for ten years under article L. 123-22 of the French Commercial Code.
Under article L. 102 B of the Tax Procedures Code (LPF), books, registers, documents and records that the tax administration can examine must be kept for six years. The period runs from the last recorded transaction or from the date the document was created. Electronic records must stay electronic for that period. Paper records may be scanned and kept for the same length of time (L. 102 B, I).
Article L. 123-22 of the French Commercial Code sets a ten-year retention period for accounting documents and supporting documents. The article does not state when this period starts.
The ten-year period is the longer of the two, so an invoice kept for ten years meets both periods.
Sources
See also
- FEC The FEC (French audit file of accounting entries) is a computer copy of all accounting entries for each financial year that a business must hand to the French tax authorities during an audit of computerised accounts, in the format set by article A. 47 A-1 of the Tax Procedures Code.
- Secure till software French VAT law (article 286, I, 3° bis of the General Tax Code) requires every business that records payments from consumers to use till software meeting conditions of inalterability, security, retention and archiving of data.
- Till closure A till closure is the end-of-period step in which till software totals the payments recorded over a given period; under article 286, I, 3° bis of the French General Tax Code, the French tax authority requires daily, monthly and annual closures.