What exactly is lost
Not the money. The expense was paid, regardless of whether a piece of paper exists for it.
What is lost is the deduction, in two places:
| Without a receipt | On €1,000 net | |
|---|---|---|
| Business expense deduction | lost as a rule | €150 more corporate tax |
| Input VAT deduction | lost | €190 stays with you |
Together that can be €340 on a net expense of €1,000, depending on whether the company is registered for VAT at all.
The burden of proof is on you
The Assessment and Collection of Taxes Law requires books and records to be kept and produced on demand.
From that follows a direction often misunderstood: the tax department does not have to prove that an expense was private. You have to evidence that it was for the business.
What actually helps, in this order
1. Ask the supplier again. The only route that fully rescues the deduction. It almost always works while the transaction is fresh.
2. Look in the customer account. For software subscriptions, hosting, advertising and payment providers, invoices are usually held permanently for download. That covers a large part of a small company’s running costs.
3. Self-documentation. Date, amount, subject of the supply, supplier and proof of payment. It does not secure the deduction but makes the transaction traceable.
The real mistake happens earlier
A receipt is rarely lost. It is simply never asked for.
With a payment from three weeks ago you know what it was, and the supplier reissues the invoice without question. With one from eleven months ago you often do not, and the supplier cannot find the transaction.
The gap can only come to light in one place: at the bank reconciliation. A payment with no matched receipt stands out nowhere else, because nothing happens if you overlook it. See the guide to bank reconciliation.
Scanning receipts: then the gap does not arise
The three routes above are repair. The case can only be avoided beforehand, with a habit that costs two movements.
In Volk Accountant the scanner runs in the phone’s browser, with nothing installed. Point the camera at the receipt: the paper edges are detected, the image deskewed, and a clean PDF comes out of it. The AI then reads six fields, supplier, invoice number, date, amount, tax rate and expense category, and puts them up for confirmation. Nothing is posted without that confirmation.
For the second route by which receipts get lost, the email inbox, there is a separate email address for each company: incoming invoices are forwarded there and read the same way. Nobody has to download a file first and then upload it again.
Both aim at the same point: the receipt sits with the transaction and not in a filing system alongside. Details under capturing receipts with the camera.
And then keep it for six years
Receipts have to be kept for six years, since 2026 counted from filing the return and no longer from the year end. In a tax audit the period extends by one year from the start of the audit until its conclusion.
In practice: a receipt from 2026 has to be available well into the 2030s. Details in the guide to keeping records.
What we could not substantiate
- Whether the tax department accepts self-documentation. We found no source on it. We describe it as a better alternative to nothing, not as a viable substitute.
- Whether there is a de minimis limit below which simplified evidence is enough. We found nothing on this.
- The exact consequences in an audit. That the deduction is lost is the obvious legal consequence. Whether sanctions threaten beyond that we could not establish.
For larger amounts the question belongs with somebody who answers for it: Cyprus setup from one place.
Bookkeeping: the receipt belongs with the entry
Receipts get lost when they live separately from the entry, for instance in an email inbox or a folder organised by month.
In Volk Accountant the receipt sits with the transaction: receipt capture shows which payments are still missing one, and Banking shows the movements alongside. That single view is why the gap comes to light after three weeks rather than after eleven months. Anyone who wants to keep their own archive connects it through Google Drive.
What else there is to do in a month is in the guide to the monthly close.