How long do you need to keep receipts for the ATO?

Five years — and the detail that trips people up is not the number, it's when the five years starts.

The clock runs from the date you lodge the return the record supports, not from the date on the receipt. A receipt from July 2026 supports a return you might lodge in September 2027, which means keeping it until September 2032. Counted from the receipt, that looks like six years, not five.

What actually has to be kept#

For work-related expenses, the ATO wants written evidence — and it is specific about what that document must show:

• the supplier's name
• the amount of the expense
• the nature of the goods or services — what you actually bought
• the date the expense was incurred
• the date of the document

Most retail receipts carry all five. Where one is missing, you're often not sunk:

• If the receipt doesn't describe what you bought — a common problem with hardware and stationery — you can write it on the document yourself.
• If it doesn't show the date the expense was incurred, you can use a bank statement or another document to establish it.

Records must be in English, or readily translatable into English.

The threshold that decides whether you need receipts at all#

If your total claim for work-related expenses is $300 or less, you don't need to hold written evidence for them.

This is the most misunderstood rule in Australian personal tax, so it's worth being precise about what it does and doesn't do.

What it does: removes the requirement to keep receipts.

What it does not do: remove the requirement to have actually spent the money on something work-related. You still need to be able to explain how you worked the claim out. It is not a $300 allowance, and treating it as one is exactly the behaviour the ATO looks for.

There is also a trap in how the threshold is calculated: car expenses, meal allowance, award transport payments allowance and travel allowance expenses are excluded from the $300 total. They have their own substantiation rules. So a $250 claim plus a car claim does not sit under the threshold in the way people assume.

This is covered properly in claiming deductions without receipts.

Small expenses have their own rule#

Separately from the $300 threshold, there's a concession for genuinely small amounts. Where an expense is $10 each, up to $200 in total, you can make your own written record instead of keeping the supplier's receipt.

The same applies where getting a receipt was genuinely impractical — an unattended parking meter, for instance. Write down what it was, when, and how much, at the time.

How long, for what#

The CGT one catches people out. If you bought an investment property or shares in 2010 and sell in 2030, you need the 2010 purchase records in 2030 — which means twenty years of keeping something you might reasonably have thought was long expired.

Your tax agent keeping them doesn't count#

Using a registered tax agent doesn't move the obligation. The records need to be yours, and you need to be able to produce them. Agents keep working papers, not your receipts, and a firm you've since left has no duty to hold anything for you.

The same goes for the ATO's own myDeductions tool — helpful for capture, but it's you who must retain the evidence.

What happens if you can't produce them#

If the ATO reviews a claim and you can't substantiate it, the deduction is disallowed. You'll owe the tax you avoided, plus interest, and potentially a penalty depending on whether the ATO considers the claim careless or deliberate.

The realistic risk isn't an audit out of nowhere. It's a data-matching flag — a claim that sits well outside the pattern for your occupation and income — followed by a letter asking you to show your working. At that point the question is entirely whether you kept the paperwork.

A workable system#

You do not need a filing cabinet. You need three things:

1. Capture at the point of purchase, not later. The receipt you photograph in the car park is the one that survives; the one you mean to sort out on Sunday is the one that goes through the wash.
2. Something that makes them findable. Five years of receipts you cannot search is a box, not a record. Searchable by supplier, date and amount is what makes them useful under a question.
3. A digital copy, backed up. The ATO accepts a true and clear copy, so the digital version can be the version you keep — see are photos of receipts accepted by the ATO.

Do that and the five-year rule stops being a burden. It's just a folder that happens to be complete.