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    What Records Do I Need to Keep for Self Assessment?

    The full list, how long to hold it, and the digital rule that changed in April 2026

    You must keep records of all your business income and all your business expenses, plus VAT (Value Added Tax) records if you are VAT registered, PAYE (Pay As You Earn) records if you employ anyone, records of your personal income, and any Self-Employment Income Support Scheme grants you claimed. You must keep them for at least 5 years after the 31 January submission deadline of the relevant tax year. So for the 2025/26 tax year, the return is due 31 January 2027 and you must keep the records until 31 January 2032. Since 6 April 2026 there is a second, separate obligation: if your qualifying income was over £50,000 for 2024/25, those records must now be kept digitally in compatible software under Making Tax Digital for Income Tax. A shoebox of receipts still satisfies the retention rule and no longer satisfies the digital one.

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    Guidance, not advice. We explain the rules, we don't assess your situation. Always seek financial or tax advice from your accountant, or contact HMRC. Read our editorial scope →

    What records do you actually have to keep?

    HMRC (HM Revenue and Customs) sets a core list that applies to every self-employed person, whatever your trade and whatever your turnover. This is not a best-practice suggestion, it is the requirement.

    • ☐All sales and income
    • ☐All business expenses
    • ☐VAT (Value Added Tax) records, if you are registered for VAT
    • ☐PAYE (Pay As You Earn) records, if you employ people
    • ☐Records about your personal income
    • ☐Your grants, if you claimed through the Self-Employment Income Support Scheme

    What extra records does traditional accounting need?

    If you use traditional accounting, which means recording income and expenses by the date you invoiced or were billed rather than the date money moved, you have to keep a further set of figures on top of the core list.

    • ☐What you are owed but have not received yet
    • ☐What you have committed to spend but have not paid out yet
    • ☐The value of stock and work in progress at the end of your accounting period
    • ☐Your year end bank balances
    • ☐How much you have invested in the business in the year
    • ☐How much money you have taken out for your own use

    How long do you have to keep them?

    At least 5 years after the 31 January submission deadline of the relevant tax year. The clock starts at the filing deadline, not at the end of the tax year, which pushes the real retention period out towards 6 years from when you earned the money. Work it out from the deadline every time and you will not get caught short.

    Retention dates for recent tax years
    Tax year Tax year ended Online return due Keep records until
    2024/25 5 April 2025 31 January 2026 31 January 2031
    2025/26 5 April 2026 31 January 2027 31 January 2032
    2026/27 5 April 2027 31 January 2028 31 January 2033

    Do your records now have to be digital?

    For a growing group of people, yes, and this is the part most record-keeping guidance has not caught up with. Making Tax Digital for Income Tax became mandatory on 6 April 2026. It is a separate obligation from the retention rule above, and meeting one does not mean you have met the other.

    Who is caught, and when

    The test is qualifying income, which is your gross income from self-employment and property before you deduct any expenses. If your qualifying income was over £50,000 for the 2024/25 tax year, you should have started using Making Tax Digital for Income Tax from 6 April 2026. If it was over £30,000 for 2025/26, you will need to use it from 6 April 2027. If it was over £20,000 for 2026/27, you will need to use it from 6 April 2028. Note the two year lag built into every line: the year that decides whether you are caught is not the year you start.

    What a digital record actually means

    Digital records must include each transaction made in the course of the business, recording the amount of the transaction, the date of the transaction on the basis you use for income tax, and the category the transaction falls into. It has to live in software that works with Making Tax Digital for Income Tax, which is what lets you create, store and correct those records and send them to HMRC. There is a simplification available: for each source of income you may categorise a record simply as income or as an expense rather than using more detailed categories, which means your quarterly update carries total income and total expenses per income source.

    What if your records are lost, stolen or destroyed?

    Try to replace them first. Ask suppliers for duplicate invoices, download bank and card statements, and pull anything sitting in an email inbox or a supplier portal. Where you genuinely cannot replace a record, HMRC's position is that you must do your best to provide figures rather than leave the box blank.

    Say which figures are not final

    If you cannot get to the actual numbers you must tell HMRC when you file, and there are two labels for it. Estimated figures are your best guess where you cannot provide the actual figures and do not expect to be able to. Provisional figures are temporary estimates you are using while you wait for the real ones, and they carry an obligation to come back and correct the return once you have them. Using the right label matters, because a provisional figure you never revisit becomes an inaccurate return.

    What does good record-keeping look like day to day?

    The requirement is a list of categories. The habit is what makes it survivable five years later, when you no longer remember what a £340 payment to a builders merchant was for.

    • ☐Keep business money separate from personal money, so the bank feed is close to being the record itself
    • ☐Capture the receipt at the point of spending, not at the year end when the thermal paper has faded
    • ☐Record the purpose alongside the amount, because an amount and a date do not prove a business use
    • ☐Keep a contemporaneous mileage log if you claim vehicle costs, since this is the record most often reconstructed and most often challenged
    • ☐Reconcile monthly rather than annually, so gaps surface while you can still remember and still fix them
    • ☐Diarise the retention dates, so the 2025/26 box is not thrown out in 2029

    Statute references: gov.uk, Business records if you're self-employed: what records to keep (retrieved 16 August 2026); gov.uk, Business records if you're self-employed: how long to keep your records (retrieved 16 August 2026); gov.uk, Check if you're eligible for Making Tax Digital for Income Tax (retrieved 16 August 2026); HMRC, Making Tax Digital for Income Tax: digital record-keeping notice (retrieved 16 August 2026).

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    Frequently asked questions

    What happens if I miss the Self Assessment deadline?+
    The Self Assessment deadline is 31 January (online filing) for the previous tax year. Miss it and HMRC apply an automatic £100 penalty. Beyond that: £10 per day from 3 months late (capped at £900), 5% of tax due at 6 months late, and another 5% at 12 months late, under Schedule 55 of the Taxes Management Act 1970. If you have a genuine reason (serious illness, bereavement, technical issue with HMRC's systems) you can appeal with evidence; HMRC accepts reasonable excuse appeals in most genuine cases.
    Do I need an accountant or can I file Self Assessment myself?+
    Legally you can file Self Assessment yourself via gov.uk for free, most simple sole-trader returns (single income source, basic expenses) are realistic to self-file. An accountant adds real value when: your trading profit is above £40,000 (extraction-strategy decisions matter), you have multiple income streams (PAYE + self-employment + property + dividends), you've crossed the £90,000 VAT threshold, you're considering incorporation, or you have an HMRC enquiry. Expect to pay £400-£1,500/year for a typical sole-trader accountant; the cost is itself a deductible expense.
    How do payments on account work?+
    When your Self Assessment tax bill exceeds £1,000 for the first time, HMRC requires payments on account toward NEXT year's tax. Half the current bill is due 31 January (alongside the current bill); the other half is due 31 July. So your first January after crossing the threshold can hit with a double-bill: last year's balance + first payment on account. Adjust via Form SA303 if you expect next year's income to drop substantially. Payments on account don't apply if more than 80% of your tax is collected via PAYE.
    Do I have to keep the paper receipts, or is a photo enough?+
    A digital copy is fine. HMRC accepts scanned or photographed records provided the image is legible and you keep all the information shown on the original document. There is no requirement to keep the paper once you hold a complete and readable copy. The practical caution is completeness rather than format: a photo that crops off the date, the supplier name or the VAT (Value Added Tax) number is not a complete record. If you are within Making Tax Digital for Income Tax, note that photographing receipts does not by itself meet the digital record requirement, because the transaction data has to sit in compatible software, not just as an image in your phone roll.
    What counts as 'records about your personal income'?+
    Anything outside the business that goes on the same tax return. Employment income and the tax deducted under PAYE (Pay As You Earn), so your P60 and any P45 or P11D. Bank and building society interest. Dividends. Pension income and contributions. Rental income. Foreign income. Gift Aid donations, which extend your basic rate band. Student loan deductions. HMRC assesses you as a person, not as a business, so a return that gets the trade right and the savings interest wrong is still a wrong return.
    I use the cash basis. Do I need less?+
    You need the same core records, and fewer of the extras. Everyone keeps sales, expenses, VAT records if registered, PAYE records if employing, personal income and any grants. Traditional accounting adds a further layer: what you are owed but have not received, what you have committed to spend but have not paid, the value of stock and work in progress at your period end, your year end bank balances, how much you invested in the business during the year, and how much you took out for your own use. On the cash basis you are recording money in and money out, so those debtor, creditor and stock figures are not required.
    Does keeping records digitally mean I have to file quarterly too?+
    Yes, if you are inside Making Tax Digital for Income Tax. The digital record requirement and the quarterly update requirement arrive together, as one regime. If your qualifying income was over £50,000 for 2024/25 you should have been keeping digital records and sending quarterly updates since 6 April 2026, then finalising with a year-end declaration. If you are under the threshold none of it applies yet, and you carry on with one annual return. Check the thresholds carefully, because qualifying income is your gross self-employment and property income before expenses, not your profit.
    What if HMRC opens an enquiry after I have thrown the records away?+
    That is precisely the risk the 5 year rule protects you against, and why the clock runs from the filing deadline rather than from the end of the tax year. Within the retention window you should still hold the evidence. Outside it, you are relying on whatever you kept voluntarily. Bank statements are the usual fallback, and most banks hold at least 6 years, but a statement proves that money moved, not what it was for, so an expense claim can be hard to defend on statements alone. Keeping the records for the full period is much cheaper than reconstructing them.

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