Document Retention Periods: How Long Must You Keep Business Records in 2026?

There is no single retention period for business records in Europe: each country sets its own in tax, VAT or commercial law, and invoices are kept 5 years in Romania, 7 in the Netherlands and 10 in France. Germany, for example, requires 8 years from the end of the year of issue (§ 14b UStG).

Invoice retention periods in eight EU countries

The table shows the general rule for sales and purchase invoices of an ordinary company. Each country page has the full table for that country, with the article of law for every period, the point from which it runs and the exceptions.

Country	Invoices kept for	Counted from	Legal basis
Germany	8 years	End of the calendar year in which the invoice was issued	§ 14b Abs. 1 UStG, § 147 AO, § 257 HGB
Austria	7 years	End of the calendar year to which the invoice relates	§ 132 Abs. 1 BAO, § 11 Abs. 2 UStG 1994
Netherlands	7 years (10 for immovable property)	End of the financial year, once the data are no longer in current use	Art. 52 lid 4 AWR; art. 34a Wet OB 1968
France	10 years	Close of the financial year	Code de commerce, art. L123-22
Italy	10 years	Date of the last accounting entry, in practice the close of the year in which the invoice is recorded	Codice civile, art. 2220; D.P.R. 600/1973, art. 22
Spain	4 years for tax, 6 years under commercial law	Tax: the day after the filing deadline of the return. Commercial: the last entry in the books	Ley 58/2003 General Tributaria, art. 66, 67 and 70; Código de Comercio, art. 30
Poland	5 years; structured invoices are kept in KSeF for 10 years	End of the calendar year in which the VAT payment deadline fell	VAT Act, art. 112, 112a and 112aa; Tax Ordinance, art. 70 § 1
Romania	5 years	1 July of the year after the financial year in which the invoice was drawn up	Legea contabilității 82/1991, art. 25, as amended by Legea 36/2023

Arhivix keeps the invoices, contracts and statements that reach it by email (Gmail, Microsoft 365, IMAP), upload, scanner or phone camera, proposes the document type and dates for a person to confirm, and writes every open, download and share to an audit log. The retention period for your country, and the deletion at its end, stay with your company and its adviser; Arhivix keeps each document until your company deletes it. Look up the retention period for each document type in 18 countries.

What differs from country to country

• The starting point. Most periods start at the end of a year, not on the invoice date, but which year differs: the year of issue in Germany, the close of the financial year in France, 1 July of the following year in Romania. Ten years in France and ten years in Italy can end on different dates.
• Tax law and commercial law. In Spain the tax authority needs invoices for 4 years, while the Commercial Code obliges the business to keep them for 6. In Germany the period does not end while the assessment period for the related tax is still open (§ 147 Abs. 3 AO), and in Italy invoices are kept beyond ten years if a tax assessment on that year started before the tenth year ended and is still open.
• Real estate. Invoices and records for immovable property are kept longer: 10 years in the Netherlands, 20 in Slovenia and 22 in Austria.
• E-invoices on a state platform. In Poland structured invoices are stored in KSeF for 10 years from the end of the year of issue (VAT Act, art. 112aa).
• Recent changes. Germany cut the period for invoices and booking vouchers from 10 to 8 years on 1 January 2025 (Fourth Bureaucracy Relief Act); banks, insurers and investment firms keep booking vouchers 10 years. Romania cut it from 10 to 5 years with Law 36/2023, in force since 15 January 2023.
• How electronic copies are kept. Some countries add conditions on the format: in Austria electronic invoices must stay authentic, intact and readable for the whole 7 years, and in Italy electronic invoices must be placed in compliant storage (conservazione a norma) under the decree of 17 June 2014.

Where to check the period for your company

Invoices are only one row. Accounting books, payroll, personnel files, tax returns, contracts and bank statements each have their own period, and for some of them a statutory number does not exist or sources disagree. The retention checker linked above shows the confirmed periods with the article of law for each, and where a period could not be confirmed it says so instead of giving a number. Before you delete anything, confirm the period with your accountant or tax adviser, especially for real estate, regulated industries and documents under an open audit.