What Receipts Do Small Business Owners Need to Keep for CRA?

Most small business owners already know they should keep receipts. The problem isn't awareness — it's the pile that accumulates in a drawer, a bag, a phone camera roll, and three different email folders between January and December.

What the CRA actually wants to see

When the CRA reviews your business expenses, they're looking for records that confirm four things: who you paid, how much you paid, when you paid it, and why it was a business expense. A receipt that shows all four is all you need.

That covers the obvious stuff — retail receipts, invoices from suppliers, contractor bills. But it also covers things people often overlook, like bank and credit card statements (useful as backup, not sufficient on their own), mileage logs if you're claiming vehicle use, and home office calculations if you work from home.

For meal and entertainment expenses — deductible at 50% — the CRA also recommends noting who you met with and the business purpose. A quick note on the back of the receipt or in your expense app does the job.

How long do you need to keep them

Six years from the end of the tax year they relate to. That's the CRA's standard retention requirement for most business records. So if you're filing for 2025, keep those records until at least the end of 2031.

The good news is that digital records are fully accepted. A clear photo of a paper receipt, a PDF of an invoice, or a forwarded email confirmation all count as valid documentation. You don't need a filing cabinet — you just need a system that doesn't lose things.

The receipts most small business owners forget to keep

A few categories tend to slip through the cracks:

E-receipts and email confirmations

Every time you buy software, pay a subscription, or order supplies online, a confirmation lands in your inbox. Those count as receipts. Forwarding them to a dedicated expense system the moment they arrive is the easiest habit you can build.

Partial-use purchases

If you bought a laptop that you use for both work and personal use, you can only claim the business-use portion — but you still need the original receipt for the full amount, plus a record of how you calculated the split.

Cash purchases

These are easy to lose track of because there's no automatic paper trail. If you pay cash for a business expense, hold onto the receipt and log it immediately. The CRA doesn't treat cash differently — they just need the same documentation as any other purchase.

Interac and tap payments

Your bank statement shows the amount and date, but not always the vendor name or what you bought. A receipt ties those pieces together.

The real cost of missing receipts

Missing receipts don't just mean missing deductions — though that's bad enough. If the CRA audits your return and you can't support a claimed expense, they can disallow it and reassess your taxes, potentially with interest and penalties added.

Most small business owners aren't being dishonest — they genuinely spent the money on their business. But without documentation, there's nothing to defend the claim.

The fix isn't complicated. It's capturing receipts when they happen rather than trying to reconstruct them months later.

Mileage and vehicle expenses — the receipts that need a log

If you use a vehicle for business — driving to client meetings, picking up supplies, travelling between job sites — those costs are deductible. But vehicle expenses work differently from most receipts. You can't just keep the gas station slip and call it done.

The CRA requires a mileage log: a contemporaneous record of every business trip showing the date, the destination, the purpose, and the distance driven. At year-end, you calculate the percentage of your total annual driving that was for business, and that percentage applies to every vehicle cost — gas, insurance, repairs, lease payments, and depreciation.

The key word is contemporaneous. A log reconstructed from memory in March doesn't hold up well under audit. The habit that works is logging each trip when you park — it takes twenty seconds and the information is still fresh. Apps that track mileage automatically using GPS remove the habit requirement entirely.

Keep fuel receipts, insurance documents, and any repair invoices as supporting documentation. The mileage log is what determines how much of them you can claim — so without the log, those receipts are worth nothing at tax time.