Paperless
The requirements for the storage of accounting information are set out in Chapter 7 of the Swedish Tax Act. According to this Act, documents with accounting information (such as receipts) should be durable and easily accessible. They must be kept up to and including the seventh year after the end of the calendar year in which the financial year ended.
Accounting information received in paper form may be transferred to electronic form by photographing or scanning. However, the received document (paper document) may only be destroyed from the fourth year after the end of the calendar year in which the financial year ended.
The Swedish Tax Act states that the documents in principle must be stored in Sweden. A company may however store machine-readable media and keep machine equipment and systems available in another country within the European Union if:
- the place of storage and any change to this place is notified to the Tax Agency or, in the case of companies that are under the supervision of the Financial Supervisory Authority, to the Financial Supervisory Authority;
- the company, at the request of the Swedish Tax Agency or the Customs Agency, allows immediate electronic access to the accounting information for control purposes during the archiving period;
- the company can, by immediate printing, produce the accounting information in Sweden.