The Journal

Do you need receipts for Self Assessment? Record vs proof

You do not send HMRC a single receipt with your tax return: the law's first demand is a record of each cost, which you must be able to prove if asked. This piece sets out which costs survive a lost receipt, what Making Tax Digital for Income Tax changed in April 2026, and the date on which each tax year can be deleted.

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A record is the entry; the receipt is the evidence behind it

You do not send receipts with a Self Assessment return. gov.uk's guidance for the self-employed says so in terms: "You do not need to send your records in when you submit your tax return but you need to keep them", so that you can work out your profit or loss and "show them to HM Revenue and Customs (HMRC) if asked".

The more useful answer turns on a distinction the guidance makes without labouring it. What you must keep records of is "all sales and income" and "all business expenses". Under a separate heading, "Keep proof", the same page lists the types of proof: "all receipts for goods and stock", "bank statements, chequebook stubs", "sales invoices, till rolls and bank slips". The record is the entry: this amount, on this date, for this purpose. The receipt is one kind of evidence that the entry is true; the list does not make it the only kind.

The statute draws the line in the same place. Section 12B of the Taxes Management Act 1970 requires a person carrying on a trade, profession or business to keep records of "all amounts received and expended in the course of the trade, profession or business and the matters in respect of which the receipts and expenditure take place". Receipts, in that sentence, means money coming in, not slips from a till. What the Act asks for is the amount and what it was for.

None of this makes the paper optional. HMRC's internal manual on the legal framework of Self Assessment reads the duty as covering "all supporting documents relating to the transactions of the business, that is accounts, books, deeds, contracts, vouchers and receipts". HMRC expects both layers. The distinction is worth having because the two fail differently. Whether a photograph does the same work as the paper is a separate question from this one.

Where a missing receipt is survivable, and where it is not

HMRC's factsheet on information notices says that when it is checking your tax position "we'll normally ask you to help by giving us information and documents that we need. If you don't do this, we may give you an information notice", a legal document requiring you to produce them. If you do not comply, HMRC may charge a £300 penalty, and then daily penalties of "up to £60 a day". It says it will not charge a penalty where you have "a reasonable excuse", and one of its examples is that "you've lost the documents in a fire or flood".

The same factsheet sets a limit. HMRC cannot use a notice to demand documents "that you don't have and you can't get (or get copies of) from whoever has them". A receipt that has gone cannot be required. A copy you could get is a different matter: a duplicate invoice from the supplier, a statement from the bank, an order confirmation still in your email.

The ranking that follows is this piece's reading of the sources, not a published HMRC scale.

A cost paid by card or transfer to a named supplier, and entered at the time with a note of what it was for, survives the loss of its receipt best. The bank statement is on gov.uk's list of proof in its own right and shows the amount, the date and the payee. What it cannot show is what was bought, and that is the half of the statutory record, "the matters in respect of which" the money was spent, that only your own entry carries. A bank line with no entry behind it proves that money left the account. It does not prove a business cost.

A small cash purchase with no receipt and no entry survives worst: no second trace, and nobody to ask for a copy. For cash, the entry made on the day is all there is.

Where records are lost, stolen or destroyed and cannot be replaced, gov.uk's instruction is that "you must do your best to provide figures", and to tell HMRC when you file that they are estimated or provisional.

Section 12B allows a penalty "not exceeding £3,000" for failing to keep or preserve records, but HMRC's manual says it "will normally be sought only in serious cases, for example, where there has been a history of record-keeping failures or records have been destroyed deliberately to obstruct an enquiry". One lost slip is not its target. Even so, no page opened for this piece promises that an unsupported figure will stand, or sets a value below which a receipt stops mattering.

Who is inside Making Tax Digital for Income Tax now, and who joins in 2027 and 2028

The question is changing shape because of Making Tax Digital for Income Tax, which began on 6 April 2026. gov.uk's guidance gives three steps, each tied to the qualifying income on an earlier return. Over £50,000 for the 2024 to 2025 tax year, "you should've started using Making Tax Digital for Income Tax from 6 April 2026". Over £30,000 for the 2025 to 2026 tax year, "you will need to use it from 6 April 2027". Over £20,000 for the 2026 to 2027 tax year, "you will need to use it from 6 April 2028".

It applies to sole traders and landlords registered for Self Assessment. The same page says there are exemptions, "you could be exempt if you are digitally excluded" being its example, and an exempt person goes on filing a Self Assessment return. Partnerships "will also need to use Making Tax Digital for Income Tax in the future", on a timeline HMRC has yet to set out.

Qualifying income is the term that catches people out. HMRC defines it as "your total income from self-employment and property", and adds: "This is the amount before expenses (also known as turnover)". It is turnover, not profit, and the sources are added together: HMRC's example is £25,000 of rent plus £27,000 of self-employment income, making £52,000. Employment income, dividends, pensions and an individual partner's share of partnership profit do not count.

HMRC writes to people whose returns put them over a threshold, but if no letter arrives "it is still your responsibility to check if and when you need to use Making Tax Digital for Income Tax".

Quarterly updates change the cadence, not the underlying rules

Inside Making Tax Digital the entry becomes a digital record, and HMRC says what each one must hold: the amount, the "date when the income was received or expenses incurred", and a category. A quarter's records must exist before its update is sent or its deadline arrives, and the guidance adds: "You should create digital records as close to the date of the transaction as possible."

Every three months the software totals the records, and you check the totals and send them. For accounts that follow the tax year the deadlines are 7 August, 7 November, 7 February and 7 May. HMRC calls the updates "summaries, not tax returns"; each runs from the start of the tax year, so a corrected record flows into the next one, and a tax return still follows at the end. HMRC will not apply penalty points for late quarterly updates during the 2026 to 2027 tax year.

Two sentences settle the receipts question. "HMRC will not receive details of individual digital records, such as a receipt or invoice." And: "You still need to keep original records or supporting documents (or copies of them) that you have used to prepare your tax return, such as bank statements and invoices." The evidence stays with you, as before. What has changed is that the entry can no longer wait for one weekend in January.

So the working habit is to capture a cost at the moment it happens, entry and proof together, while you still know what the money was for. Filing software does this. So, for the capture half only, does a general tool: Barriers, the household app made by this journal's publisher, has a Finance section that runs month by month, and a receipt can be photographed and filed against the month it belongs to. It is a capture-and-keep tool, not filing software, and it does not submit quarterly updates to HMRC.

Cash basis is now the default: the date a cost counts

The date on a receipt is not always the date that matters. gov.uk states: "From the 2024 to 2025 tax year, cash basis is the default method of accounting. You must opt out if you want to use traditional accounting or cannot use cash basis accounting."

Under cash basis a cost counts when it is paid. "Only count the expenses you've actually paid", the guidance says, and its income example is an invoice issued on 15 March 2024 and paid on 30 April 2024, which belongs to the 2024 to 2025 tax year. You may choose what counts as the moment of payment, "for example, the date the money enters your account or the date a cheque is written", but "you must use the same method each tax return". Traditional accounting runs the other way, recording income and expenses "by the date you invoiced or were billed".

This shifts the weight of the evidence. For a supplier's bill dated late March and paid in mid-April, the document that places the cost in a tax year is the proof of payment, which makes the bank statement more than a fallback. Cash basis also treats equipment bought to keep as an ordinary allowable expense rather than a capital allowance, cars excepted.

Cash basis is closed to limited companies, limited liability partnerships and partnerships with a corporate partner. gov.uk lists six further exclusions, among them Lloyd's underwriters, a current herd basis election, mineral extraction, and any business that has ever claimed research and development allowance.

Simplified expenses: a flat rate still requires a record, just a different one

Simplified expenses replace some actual costs with flat rates. They do not remove the record; they change what it is. gov.uk's first instruction is: "Keep records of your business miles for vehicles, hours you work at home and how many people live at your business premises over the year."

For vehicles the rate has just moved. HMRC's table gives 55p a mile for the first 10,000 business miles in a car or goods vehicle for the 2026 to 2027 tax year, against 45p before 6 April 2026; 25p a mile after 10,000 miles; and 24p a mile for motorcycles. A return for 2025 to 2026, due by 31 January 2027, uses 45p. The flat rate stands in for the costs of buying and running the vehicle, fuel, insurance, repairs and servicing among them, so the claim rests on the mileage record rather than on fuel receipts. Once you use the flat rate for a vehicle you must go on using it for that vehicle, and it is not available where you have claimed capital allowances.

For working from home the rates are £10 a month for 25 to 50 hours of business use, £18 for 51 to 100, and £26 for 101 or more. Below 25 hours a month the flat rate is not available, and it excludes telephone and internet, of which you claim the business proportion from the actual bills. The record here is a monthly count of hours.

The date you can delete a tax year, and the longer rule for a company

gov.uk puts the rule as "at least 5 years after the 31 January submission deadline of the relevant tax year", with an example: a 2022 to 2023 return sent online by 31 January 2024 means records kept "until at least the end of January 2029".

As arithmetic: take the year in which the tax year ends and add six. The 2025 to 2026 tax year ends on 5 April 2026, its return is due by 31 January 2027, and its records can go after 31 January 2032. For 2026 to 2027 the date is 31 January 2033, and HMRC confirms Making Tax Digital records are kept for the same period. Under cash basis, remember which year a cost belongs to: a bill dated March 2026 and paid on or after 6 April 2026 is a 2026 to 2027 cost, and lives until 2033.

Three things move the date or widen its reach. If HMRC opens an enquiry into the return, section 12B requires the records to be preserved until the enquiry is completed, where that is later. If you send a return more than four years after its deadline, gov.uk says to keep the records for 15 months after sending it. And HMRC's manual notes that for a taxpayer with a business "the five-year time limit applies to all records, not simply the business records", so the personal papers behind the same return are kept just as long. The periods for household papers generally are set out elsewhere on this site, in the piece on how long to keep bank statements, bills and receipts.

Trading through a limited company is a different regime. gov.uk's guidance says: "You must keep records for 6 years from the end of the last company financial year they relate to", or longer in four listed cases, among them a late Company Tax Return and a compliance check HMRC has started. The fine is £3,000, and a director can be disqualified. Neither cash basis nor simplified expenses is open to a company.

This piece describes published rules as they stood on 20 September 2026. It is not advice on your own tax affairs.

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