New version of the accounting rules in progress

The Federal Ministry of Finance is currently preparing a revised version of the accounting rules (GoBD).

In 2014, the German Federal Ministry of Finance set out in the "Principles for the proper keeping and storage of books, records and documents in electronic form and for data access (GoBD)" what must be observed in accounting and the storage of documents in order for accounting to be recognized as proper by the tax office. These requirements have had to be observed since January 1, 2015. The Ministry is now planning a new version of the GoBD, in which the following changes in particular have been envisaged to date:

• Cash Management: It is clarified that cash receipts and cash disbursements must be recorded on a daily basis. Previously, the provision only referred to "shall".

  

• Digitization: When digitizing paper documents, the term "image capture" is now used instead of "scanning". This means that commercial letters, accounting documents and other paper documents can also be captured electronically by photographing them or using other technologies. So as long as the requirements for digital capture and archiving are met, capture will be possible in the future using a wide variety of devices - from smartphones to scan streets. The capture of receipts by mobile devices abroad is explicitly permitted if the receipts originated or were received abroad and are captured directly. Thus, for example, the receipts of a business trip abroad can be recorded with the smartphone in the future.

• Conversion: Up to now, both versions have to be archived when converting documents subject to retention requirements into a company's own format. In the future, it will be sufficient to retain only the converted version if no visual or content-related changes are made, no other information subject to retention is lost during conversion, proper and loss-free conversion is documented, and machine evaluability and data access by the tax authorities are not restricted.

The Ministry has now asked various associations to comment on the draft. In the summer, the German Chamber of Tax Advisors (Bundessteuerberaterkammer) had already sent a submission to the Ministry with suggestions for improving the GoBD, criticizing in particular that small companies are often overburdened with the requirements for procedural documentation.