You scanned the receipt, the figures are in your books, and the paper is still in a drawer because nobody ever told you it was safe to shred. EU law sets a floor that treats a digital record as equal to paper, then hands one specific question back to each country. Here is where that leaves you.
Two things before the detail. We sell receipt-scanning software, so the last section is about our product and you can skip it. And nothing on this page decides your case: your accountant knows which of these rules your business actually sits under.
Is a scanned receipt legally valid in the EU?
Yes, as a record. EU VAT law is medium-neutral: an electronic copy counts the same as paper as long as the origin is authentic, the content is unaltered and the document stays readable until the storage period ends. Whether you may then destroy the paper original is a second question with its own answer.
The floor sits in Articles 232 and 233 of the VAT Directive (2006/112/EC). Three properties have to hold from the moment a document is issued until the end of the storage period: authenticity of origin, integrity of content, legibility. How you get there is left open. Any reliable business control that creates a dependable link between the document and the transaction behind it will do, and a qualified electronic signature is named as an example rather than required.
So a good scan is a legitimate record. The step that trips people up is the next one, and Article 247 of the VAT Directive is where it lives. Paragraph 1 leaves the length of the storage period to each Member State. Paragraph 2 then says a Member State "may require that invoices be stored in the original form in which they were sent or made available, whether paper or electronic". May, not must. Digitising a paper original and binning it is neither granted nor forbidden EU-wide. It is left to national law.
That leaves the Cyprus answer with a hole in it, and we would rather show you the hole. We could not confirm from a primary source whether Cyprus took that option: the text of the Cypriot VAT law and the ministry's own site were both out of reach for this research pass, and a second-hand summary is not good enough for a question with a shredder at the end of it. So treat the EU floor as settled and the Cypriot layer as open, then ask your accountant one thing: does Cypriot law require invoices to be kept in the form they arrived in?
How long do you have to keep receipts and invoices in Cyprus?
At least six years. Cyprus counts from the filing deadline for the return or from the day you actually filed, whichever falls later, and the clock stretches if an examination is still running near the end. That applies to the records themselves, whether you hold them as paper or as files.
Six years is the current figure, written into the Assessment and Collection of Taxes Law by the 2025 amending act (N. 243(I)/2025) and in force since the start of 2026. The clock does not begin at the date printed on the receipt. It begins at the filing deadline for the return that record belongs to, or on the day the return actually went in, and the later of the two wins.
That rewrite replaced a seven-year formulation, so a Cyprus retention figure on a page written before 2026 is probably describing the old text rather than a different reading of the new one.
Six years is a Cypriot number, not a European one. Article 247(1) leaves the length of the storage period to each Member State, which is why any guide quoting a single retention period "for the EU" is telling you something the Directive does not say. What has to appear on the document you are keeping is a separate matter from how long you keep it: Cyprus invoice requirements covers the fields, and the Cyprus bookkeeping guide covers the year around them.
What should you check before shredding the paper?
Five things: that the scan is readable end to end, that every page made it, that the file exists in more than one place, that the document is not one of the rare originals that matters for a non-tax reason, and that no second country has a claim on your books.
- Readable end to end. Open the scan at full size and read it, small print included. Thermal till receipts fade to a grey rectangle within months, so today's scan may already be the only legible copy.
- Every page. Restaurant bills with the VAT breakdown on the back, invoices with terms on page two, statements that continue past the fold. Check the page count of the file against the paper first.
- More than one copy. A single file on one laptop is not a six-year archive. It has to survive a lost phone, a dead disk and a cancelled cloud subscription.
- Not an original that matters for another reason. Most receipts and invoices are pure tax records. A notarised deed, a signed contract or a warranty card tied to the physical item is not.
- No second country in the picture. If any part of your business is registered or taxed outside Cyprus, that country's rules sit on top of these and may be stricter.
One practical note on the capture itself. Files go in as PDF, JPG, PNG or HEIC at up to 20 MB each, a multi-page PDF stays one document rather than turning into five loose pages, and the file type is checked against the actual bytes rather than the extension, so a renamed file is refused at the door . The full list is in supported file types and sizes, and the phone-camera route is in scan with the mobile app.
Do all EU countries have the same rule?
No, and the Directive says so. Each Member State fixes its own storage period, and each decides separately whether invoices have to stay in the form they arrived in. Cyprus's six years is the figure this guide checked in the source text. If part of your business is taxed elsewhere, that country's rule wins there.
This guide verified Cyprus and stopped there on purpose. Retention periods across the EU are national under Article 247(1), and the original-form option in Article 247(2) is one some countries have taken and others have not. Printing a tidy table of numbers we have not read in the source text ourselves would look more useful and be worth less.
It matters most if you moved. Plenty of people running a business in Cyprus still have a slice of income taxed where they came from, and Article 247(2) is precisely the door through which that other country can add requirements Cyprus may not have . Which rule covers which part of your books is a question for an advisor there. Ask it once, in writing.
Where your scans actually live
A phone camera roll is not a records system. Photos disappear with the phone, they cannot be searched by vendor or amount, and the one receipt you need in year four is reliably the one that never synced.
TaxItEasy keeps the original file, not just the figures pulled out of it. What you uploaded is stored as it arrived, in Frankfurt, next to the extracted vendor, date, amounts and VAT, and the Documents list shows those originals with their dates and file sizes . That is what carries the three properties from Article 233: the thing you produce later is the document itself, not a summary of it.
Getting the files back out is deliberately boring. A connected accountant can build a ZIP of every original receipt for your company, and from Settings you can run the company data export, which ships a checksum for every file so the recipient can verify nothing changed on the way . Deletion runs the other way and it is final: a 30-day grace period, then the key that reads your documents is destroyed .
What we are not claiming is that any of this makes your scans audit-proof. Software can keep a document readable, keep it in one place and record who changed what. It cannot tell you whether your national rule wanted the paper as well. That sentence belongs to your accountant, and sharing the whole set with them costs one email address. TaxItEasy prepares the books; they review and file them.
For receipts that arrive as email attachments the paper question never comes up, and pulling receipts out of your inbox is the shorter route. For everything that still lands on a till roll, the receipt scanning app is the capture side of the same set.
Frequently asked questions
Do I need to keep paper receipts after scanning them?
EU VAT law treats a digital record as equal to paper when its origin, content and readability hold up. It also lets each country insist that invoices stay in the form they arrived in. Cyprus's position on that second point is not something we could confirm, so ask your accountant before shredding.
How long do I need to keep receipts and invoices in Cyprus?
At least six years, counted from the filing deadline for the return or the day you actually filed, whichever is later . If an examination opens near the end of that window, the retention period is extended. Older articles quoting a longer period describe the previous wording.
What makes a scanned receipt acceptable?
Three properties, in the Directive's own words: authenticity of origin, integrity of content, and legibility, held from the moment the document is issued until the storage period ends . In practice that means a complete, readable capture you can trace back to the transaction, stored somewhere it cannot quietly change.
Can I throw away a receipt if the scan is blurry or cut off?
No. A copy that cannot be read fails the legibility test the Directive sets, and a missing page fails it twice . Scan it again at a higher resolution, or keep that one piece of paper. One awkward receipt in a drawer is cheaper than a gap in your records.
Does TaxItEasy keep my original files or only the extracted data?
Both. The file you uploaded is stored as it arrived, in Frankfurt, next to the fields read out of it, and the Documents list shows the originals with their dates and sizes . You can pull them back out as an archive, and deleting the account erases them for good after a grace period.