How Long to Keep Receipts for Tax in Australia (ATO Rules, 2026)
The ATO requires receipts for 5 years — and accepts phone photos as valid records. The $300 rule, the $10 small-expense rule, work-use percentages, and a system that survives to tax time.
Every July, the same panic: a shoebox (or a phone camera roll) full of faded receipts, and a tax return due by 31 October. If you claim work-related expenses in Australia, the ATO expects you to prove them — and the rules about what counts as proof are more specific than most people think.
Here's a plain-English guide to what the ATO actually requires, how long you need to keep receipts, and how to set yourself up so next tax time takes minutes instead of a weekend.
How long do you need to keep receipts?
Five years, generally — counted from the date you lodge the tax return the records relate to. If the ATO reviews or audits a return, you need to be able to produce the evidence behind every claim. No records usually means no deduction, and in an audit it can mean repaying the claim plus penalties.
That's why the shoebox fails: thermal paper receipts — the shiny kind almost every shop prints — routinely fade to blank well within five years. A receipt you can't read is a receipt you don't have.
Digital copies are fine — the ATO says so
You don't need to keep the paper. The ATO accepts electronic records as long as they are a true and clear copy of the original. A photo of a receipt taken on your phone satisfies this, provided you can still read the key details:
- the supplier / merchant name
- the amount of the expense
- the nature of the goods or services
- the date the expense was incurred
- the date of the document
The practical takeaway: photograph every receipt the day you get it, before it fades, and keep the images somewhere organised and backed up.
The thresholds people mix up
$300 total work-related expenses. If your total claim for work-related expenses is $300 or less, you don't need written evidence — but you still must be able to show how you calculated the claim, and the expenses must actually have been incurred. The moment your total goes over $300, you need records for all of it, not just the amount above $300.
Small expenses ($10 or less). For expenses of $10 or less, up to a total of $200, a diary-style record you make yourself (what, when, how much, who) can stand in for a receipt.
Work-use percentage. For anything used partly for work and partly privately — phone, internet, a laptop — you can only claim the work-related portion, and you need a reasonable basis for the split (for example a four-week representative diary).
A system that actually survives to October
The failure mode is never "I didn't know I could claim that." It's "I know I paid for it, but I can't find the receipt." A workable system needs three properties:
- Capture at the moment of purchase — if it waits for the weekend, it doesn't happen.
- Amount, merchant and date recorded as data — not just an image you'll have to re-type in July.
- One export at tax time — everything for the financial year, in a format your accountant (or myTax) can use.
You can build this with a spreadsheet and a folder of photos. The discipline is the hard part — which is exactly what an app should automate.
How HeyJerni handles this
We built HeyJerni around the Australian financial year for exactly this workflow. You photograph a receipt (or a stack of them) and on-device AI reads the amount, merchant and date into a record — the original image is kept attached. Mark a work-use percentage on any expense. Then at tax time, one tap exports a Tax Pack: a PDF summary for the financial year, a CSV of every expense, and all the original receipt images — named and organised for myTax or your accountant.
And because it's HeyJerni, all of it stays on your iPhone: no account, no cloud, no bank linking. Your five years of financial records aren't sitting on someone else's server.
This article is general information, not tax advice. For your specific situation, check the ATO website or talk to a registered tax agent.
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