You must keep records of all the purchases and sales your business makes. Your records must show that taxes have been properly reported and forwarded to the Tax Commission.
Records you must keep
- Normal accounting books (which can include information stored on computers). Normal records include general ledgers, sales journals, purchases journals, etc.
- Documents that support entries in the books of account.
Examples:
- Receipts
- Customer invoices and credit granted for returned items
- Cash register tapes
- Job/work orders
- Contracts
- Purchasing records
- Bank and credit card statements
- Tax returns and all schedules or working papers used to prepare the returns
- Copies of sales tax resale or exemption certificates. Keep certificates as long as the buyer is a customer, plus four years.
What the records must show
- Gross receipts from sales and services made in Idaho – even sales that you or your customer may consider exempt from tax. If you deliver the product or service somewhere other than your place of business, you must also keep records that prove where delivery took place.
- The identity of customers claiming an exemption, the type of exemption, and what was sold exempt
- All untaxed sales claimed on tax returns
- The total purchase price of anything bought for sale, rental, lease, or your own use
- The amount of sales tax collected from your customer or that you paid to a vendor
We'll bill you for the tax due if you don't keep records to explain why sales weren't taxed.
Keep all sales and use tax records for at least four years.
- You must keep all sales and use tax records for at least four years unless you have written permission from the Tax Commission to destroy them.
- If you don’t have an Idaho seller’s permit number, you’ll need to keep your records for seven years.