Four years and six years
The tax limitation period under article 66 of the Spanish General Tax Act is four years, counted from the end of the filing deadline.
Article 30 of the Commercial Code requires books, correspondence and business records to be kept for six years from the last entry. That is the period that governs in practice.
Under what conditions
Legibility in the original format, full access to the data and the authenticity and integrity of the document must be guaranteed throughout the period.
If retention is outsourced or the servers sit outside Spain, additional notification and online-access obligations apply.
Periods that run longer
Some cases stretch retention: capital assets subject to VAT adjustment, tax losses still available for offset, or grant files with their own justification period.
What an auditor usually asks for
- A retention policy of six years as a minimum
- Legibility guaranteed in the original format
- A backup that has been verified and restored
- Special longer-period cases identified
How retention is controlled in Kimobox
- 1Configure retention periods by document type, not one single period for everything.
- 2Schedule an end-of-period alert instead of automatic deletion.
- 3Check once a year that a sample of old documents still opens correctly.
A copy that has never been restored is not a backup: it is an assumption.
Where each figure comes from
References to the official text in force. If a standard is revised, this page is updated and the review date says so.
- Royal Decree 1007/2023, regulation on the requirements for invoicing software BOE-A-2023-24840 · 06/12/2023
- Law 18/2022 on business creation and growth (article 12) BOE-A-2022-15818 · 29/09/2022
- Order EHA/962/2007 on electronic invoicing and electronic retention of invoices BOE-A-2007-7411 · 14/04/2007
- Spanish Tax Agency: invoicing systems and Verifactu Agencia Tributaria · —