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The short answer on tax records is six years. The CRA says to keep required records and supporting documents for six years from the end of the last tax year they relate to, unless it has given you permission to destroy them sooner. That covers business owners and ordinary employees alike, though what you have to keep looks different for each.
How long do you have to keep tax records?
Count from the end of the tax year, not from the date on the receipt. A coffee-shop invoice from March 2025 belongs to the 2025 tax year for a calendar-year business, so you keep it through December 31, 2031. Buy something in December and you get the same deadline as something bought in January.
Some cases run longer.
| Situation | How long the CRA says to keep |
|---|---|
| Normal records | Six years from the end of the last tax year they relate to |
| Return filed late | Six years from the date you actually filed |
| Objection or appeal under way | Until it’s settled and the appeal period has passed, or six years, whichever is latest |
| Long-term purchases and disposals of property, or winding up a business | Keep the records indefinitely |
| Dissolved corporation | Two years after the dissolution date |
The last two rows are why a rental owner or an investor should hold on to purchase papers well past six years. If you sell a property in 2040, the paperwork from the day you bought it is what proves your cost. The capital gains tax calculator is only as good as that starting number.
What records must a business keep?
The CRA describes records broadly: anything with financial information, including ledgers, journals, financial statements, returns, correspondence, charts and tables. If your accounting software, till or online shop generates data, those computer records count too, and you keep them alongside the paper.
In practice that means sales invoices, purchase receipts, bank statements, and cancelled cheques. If you pay a family member a salary, the CRA asks for cancelled cheques as proof. If you deduct mileage or hours worked, you need a logbook.
Payroll adds its own pile: time sheets, pay stubs and remittance records. The payroll remittance calculator shows what the numbers on those records should add up to. And for GST/HST, the GST/HST calculator lets you check an invoice’s tax before you file it away. GST/HST records run on the same six-year clock.
What should an employee or a retiree keep?
Less, but not nothing.
Keep your tax documents and records for at least six years.
How long should you keep your income tax records?, Canada Revenue Agency, canada.ca
That applies even when you filed online or a form says you needn’t attach anything. Keep cancelled cheques, bank statements and other proof for the deductions and credits you claimed. Keep a copy of the return and every notice of assessment or reassessment too. Think donation receipts, medical bills, tuition slips and the T4 your employer sent.
The reason is simple: the CRA can ask to see them. To see what a claim was worth in the first place, the tax refund calculator is a quick check, and the site’s checklist of documents for your tax return shows what to gather at tax time.
Where can you keep records, and can you throw them out early?
Keep them at your Canadian home or place of business, unless the CRA has said you can keep them elsewhere. Electronic records stored outside Canada need written authorization, and you have to give CRA officials access to them.
Want to shred something early? Send Form T137, Request for Destruction of Records, or write to your local tax services office. Destroying records without permission can bring a prosecution, the agency warns. That’s a strong sentence, and the fix is cheap: wait out the six years.
What if you lose records?
It happens: a flood, a laptop that dies, an old landlord who won’t call back. Start with copies. Your bank can reissue statements, suppliers can resend invoices, and your employer or payer can reissue slips. Write down what you rebuilt and how, and keep that note with the file. The CRA also has a separate page for records lost in a disaster, so check it if that’s your situation. If you’re ever asked for papers you can’t produce, say so plainly and show what you did to rebuild them.
What mistakes do people make with tax records?
The big one is keeping only the paper. If your bookkeeping lives in an app, the data is a record, and you’ll want it exportable when a subscription lapses. Another is counting the six years from the filing date on a normal return. The CRA counts from the end of the tax year, so a return filed in April 2026 for 2025 still runs to the end of 2031.
A quieter mistake is trusting one folder. A photo of a receipt on your phone with no date, no amount you can read and no note of what it was for won’t help much. The CRA does allow imaged copies of paper records if they meet the standard it points to, so look at its records pages before you throw out originals.
Also note what this page can’t say: how long provincial or industry bodies want records kept, or what a penalty would be if your records fall short. The CRA pages don’t give a penalty figure for this, and the guide to dealing with the CRA covers what a review looks like in practice.
What this page is based on
Everything here comes from the Canada Revenue Agency: the guide Keeping Records (RC188), its page on where to keep records and how long, and its page for individuals on how long to keep income tax records. The example dates are our own arithmetic on the six-year rule. No level of government runs or endorses this site.
Frequently asked questions
How long do I keep tax records in Canada?
Six years from the end of the last tax year they relate to, unless the CRA has given you permission to destroy them earlier.
When do the six years start?
At the end of the tax year the record relates to. For a late-filed return, the CRA says six years from the date you actually filed.
Which records should employees keep?
Cancelled cheques, bank statements and other proof of deductions and credits, plus a copy of the return and every notice of assessment or reassessment.
Can I destroy records before six years are up?
Only with the CRA's permission. You can send Form T137 or write to your tax services office, since destroying records without permission can lead to prosecution.
Do electronic records count?
Yes. The CRA says records from computerized systems such as accounting software and point-of-sale systems are kept along with paper documents.
- How Canadian income tax works: brackets and credits
How federal and provincial Canadian income tax stack up, what marginal and average rates mean, and how credits and deductions change your bill