How Long Must a Company Keep Its Financial Records?

Books of account

Section 128(5) requires books of account, together with the vouchers behind each entry, to be kept in good order for not less than 8 financial years immediately preceding the current financial year.

If your company is younger than eight years, keep everything from incorporation.

If the Central Government has ordered an investigation into your company, it can direct you to keep the books for longer.

Registers and secretarial records

Two special situations

Mergers and amalgamations. The books and papers of a transferor company cannot be disposed of without prior permission of the Central Government (Section 239). In practice, treat them as permanent.

Winding up. After dissolution, books and papers may be destroyed five years later, subject to prescribed conditions (Section 347).

LLPs

Books of account must be preserved for 8 years from the date they are made — Section 34 of the LLP Act, 2008 read with Rule 24 of the LLP Rules, 2009.

Professionals covered by Rule 6F must keep books for 6 years from the end of the relevant assessment year. If an assessment is reopened, keep them until that reassessment is complete.

Businesses have no separately prescribed period. What governs them in practice is how far back the department can reopen an assessment:

• Ordinarily, a reassessment notice can be issued within 3 years and 3 months from the end of the relevant assessment year.
• Where escaped income is ₹50 lakh or more, that window extends to 5 years and 3 months.
• Search cases follow the separate six-year block assessment scheme.

Transfer pricing documentation, including the Master File, must be kept for 8 years from the end of the relevant assessment year — the longest period under the income-tax law.

TDS records, challans and certificates carry no separate period. Keep them with your books for 8 years.

Section 36 of the CGST Act sets the period at 72 months from the due date of filing the annual return for that year. Because the annual return is due on 31 December following the year end, this works out to roughly six years and nine months from the financial year end.

There is an important extension. If you are party to an appeal, revision or any other proceeding, or are under investigation, you must keep the records for one year after that matter is finally disposed of, or 72 months, whichever is later.

What counts as records: purchase and sales registers, stock records, input tax credit availed, output tax payable and paid, e-invoices, e-way bills, and the additional accounts prescribed for agents and works contractors.

If you still have excise or service tax litigation running, keep the underlying records until it closes, regardless of the five-year period.

FEMA does not prescribe a single retention period for Indian companies. But contraventions can be compounded years later, and the entire share capital history must be capable of being reconstructed. The working standard is:

A listed entity must have a Board-approved document preservation policy under Regulation 9 of SEBI LODR. That policy has to sort every document into one of two buckets:

• documents preserved permanently; and
• documents preserved for not less than 8 years after the relevant transaction is completed.

Two further requirements:

• the Structured Digital Database of unpublished price sensitive information must be preserved for 8 years after the relevant transactions, and longer if an investigation or enforcement proceeding is pending.
• Website disclosures must stay up for a minimum of 5 years, and be archived thereafter in line with the company's archival policy.

All four Labour Codes came into force on 21 November 2025, and the Central Rules under them were notified on 8 May 2026. Under the Code on Wages (Central) Rules, 2026, registers must be preserved for 5 years from the date of the last entry.

Two cautions before you apply that number

1. The Central Rules apply only where the Central Government is the “appropriate government” — mainly railways, mines, oilfields, banking companies and central undertakings. For most private companies, the State Rules apply, and these are being notified state by state with differing retention periods. Check your state's notified rules.
2. Provident fund, ESI and gratuity records follow the schemes under the Code on Social Security. Gratuity records in particular should cover the employee's entire service period plus the limitation window.

• Certificate of incorporation, MOA and AOA, and every amendment
• Minutes of all Board, Committee and General Meetings
• Register of Members and Register of Charges
• All share allotment, transfer and capital records
• FEMA filings and valuation reports
• Title deeds and property documents
• Tax assessment orders and appellate orders
• Trademark, patent and other IP registrations
• Records of any merger or amalgamation

Yes. Section 7 of the Information Technology Act, 2000 gives electronic retention the same legal standing as physical retention, provided that:

• the record remains accessible and usable for later reference;
• it is retained in the format in which it was originally generated; and
• the details of origin, destination, date and time are preserved.

The Companies Act separately permits books of account to be maintained in electronic mode, with the condition that they remain complete, unaltered and legible, and that a backup is kept on servers physically located in India.

1. Adopt a Document Retention and Destruction Policy, approved by the Board. For listed companies this is mandatory; for everyone else it is the control that makes the rest defensible.
2. Set 8 financial years as your default retention period for accounting and tax records.
3. Maintain a separate permanent list — the records above — and physically segregate them.
4. Keep a destruction register, and pass a Board resolution before each destruction cycle.
5. Run a litigation hold check before any destruction: no pending or anticipated proceeding, no destruction.
6. Digitise with integrity controls, and keep the India-located backup.