Most freelancers, and small traders under €800,000 turnover and €80,000 profit, may keep simple cash-basis accounts: money in, money out, filed once a year as the Anlage EÜR with the tax return. A GmbH or UG, and a trader above those limits, needs double-entry books and a balance sheet. Either way the records follow the same rules (the GoBD): a receipt for every transaction, recorded promptly, never quietly changed, and kept for 8 years (receipts and invoices) or 10 years (the books and annual accounts).
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1. Cash basis or balance sheet: who needs which
German tax law has two ways of working out a business's profit, and the law, not preference, decides which one applies. The simple one is the cash-basis Einnahmenüberschussrechnung (EÜR). The full one is double-entry bookkeeping with an annual balance sheet (Bilanz).
- Freelancers (Freiberufler) can use the EÜR at any size. They don't run a trade (Gewerbe), so the Commercial Code's bookkeeping duty doesn't reach them, and the tax-law threshold below covers only commercial businesses and farmers. Not sure which you are? See Freiberufler or Gewerbe.
- Small traders (Gewerbe) can use the EÜR until the business has more than €800,000 turnover in a calendar year or more than €80,000 profit in a financial year. Even then, the duty to keep books starts only with the financial year after the Finanzamt has told you so in writing (§ 141 AO).
- Sole traders whose business needs a commercial set-up, such as a registered eingetragener Kaufmann (e.K.), must keep books under the Commercial Code (§ 238 HGB), unless they had no more than €800,000 revenue and €80,000 annual profit at two year-ends in a row. A new business qualifies at its first year-end (§ 241a HGB).
- A GmbH or UG, and partnerships registered as an OHG or KG, always keep double-entry books. The company counts as a trading company by law (§ 13(3) GmbHG), and the § 241a exemption is for sole traders only.
Both limits were raised from €600,000 and €60,000 for financial years starting on or after 1 January 2024, so they are the same for 2025 and 2026. Anyone who must keep books under the Commercial Code has to keep them for tax purposes too (§ 140 AO), and anyone not obliged to may still choose to.
Where it gets complicated: crossing a limit, switching method, or a business that mixes freelance and trading work. Those are questions for a Steuerberater, with your actual figures.
2. The EÜR and the Anlage EÜR
The EÜR is what it sounds like: business receipts minus business expenses (§ 4(3) EStG). As a rule, money counts in the year it comes in or goes out (§ 11 EStG), with two exceptions that catch people out:
- equipment you use for several years, such as a laptop or a car, is generally written off over its useful life rather than deducted in one go, and is listed in a fixed-asset annex (Anlage AVEÜR);
- regular payments that fall just before or just after New Year count in the year they belong to.
The result goes to the Finanzamt on the official form, the Anlage EÜR, sent electronically with your income tax return (§ 60(4) EStDV). Paper is allowed only if the Finanzamt agrees, on request, to avoid undue hardship. The Federal Ministry of Finance publishes the form each year; the versions for 2025 and 2026 are out. When the return is due is in our tax return deadline guide.
Simple does not mean informal. Every receipt behind the EÜR has to be kept for the full period, and the record-keeping rules in the next sections apply to EÜR filers as well.
3. Double-entry books and annual accounts
With double entry, every transaction is booked to two accounts, and the books show what the business owns and owes, not just what it earned. At the start there is an opening balance sheet; at the end of every financial year, a balance sheet and a profit and loss account (Gewinn- und Verlustrechnung). Together they are the annual accounts, the Jahresabschluss (§ 242 HGB). A GmbH or UG adds notes (Anhang) to them (§ 264 HGB).
The balance sheet and profit and loss account then go to the Finanzamt as a data file, the so-called E-Bilanz (§ 5b EStG). What a company files on top of that is in how a GmbH or UG is taxed.
4. The GoBD in plain English
The GoBD are the Federal Ministry of Finance's rules on keeping books and records electronically: a long administrative letter from 28 November 2019, amended on 11 March 2024 and again on 14 July 2025. They are the tax administration's reading of the Fiscal Code, and they are what a tax auditor checks your records against. Stripped down, they ask for this:
- Everything, one by one. Each transaction is recorded individually, completely and correctly (§ 146(1) AO).
- Promptly. Cash takings and cash payments daily. Anything else is considered fine if it is recorded within ten days. Booking once a month is accepted if the receipts are numbered or filed so that none can go missing in the meantime.
- A receipt for every entry. No receipt from the other side? Then you write one yourself (Eigenbeleg).
- No silent changes. An entry may not be changed in a way that hides what it said before (§ 146(4) AO). Mistakes are corrected with a new, visible entry.
- Understandable to an outsider. An expert third party must be able to follow every transaction from receipt to tax return within a reasonable time (§ 145 AO). A short description of how your records flow (Verfahrensdokumentation) is part of that. A missing one is not fatal on its own if the books can still be followed.
- In English, if you like. Books may be kept in any living language; the Finanzamt can ask for translations (§ 146(3) AO).
- In Germany or the EU. Electronic books may be kept in another EU country if the Finanzamt keeps full access to the data. Keeping them outside the EU needs the Finanzamt's approval first (§ 146(2a), (2b) AO).
Why it matters: books that follow these rules are what your tax is based on (§ 158 AO). If they cannot be relied on, the Finanzamt may estimate your figures instead (§ 162 AO).
5. Receipts, scans and e-invoices
A document that arrives digitally is kept digitally. An invoice that came as a PDF by email is kept as that PDF, unchanged; a printout is not enough. Paper receipts can be scanned, and the paper thrown away afterwards, if the scan matches the original and your scanning routine is documented, unless another law requires the original. The exceptions in tax law are the annual accounts and the opening balance sheet, which have to be kept as originals (§ 147(2) AO).
E-invoices between German businesses have been introduced from 1 January 2025 (see the e-invoice guide). The July 2025 GoBD change says what to keep:
- for an e-invoice you receive, the structured data (the XML) is enough;
- the readable PDF part of a hybrid invoice, such as ZUGFeRD, only if it carries extra tax-relevant information, such as booking notes;
- for invoices you send from an invoicing program, you need not store a PDF copy if the program can produce an identical copy at any time.
What an invoice itself must contain is in invoice requirements in Germany.
6. How long to keep what: 8, 10 and 6 years
The periods changed on 1 January 2025: accounting vouchers went from 10 years down to 8. Tax law and the Commercial Code now say the same (§ 147(3) AO, § 257(4) HGB).
| What | How long |
|---|---|
| Books and records, inventories, annual accounts, the opening balance sheet, and the instructions needed to understand them | 10 years |
| Accounting vouchers (Buchungsbelege): invoices received and sent, receipts, bank statements used as vouchers. Invoices: also § 14b UStG | 8 years (10 until 2024) |
| Business letters received, copies of those sent, and other documents that matter for tax | 6 years |
The period starts at the end of the calendar year in which the last entry was made or the document was created (§ 147(4) AO). So in 2026, receipts from 2017 and earlier and books closed in 2015 or earlier have run their course. On 1 January 2027, receipts from 2018 and books from 2016 follow. The shorter period applies to every voucher whose old 10-year period had not yet run out at the end of 2024 (Art. 97 § 19a EGAO). Banks, insurers and investment firms still keep vouchers for 10 years.
One condition overrides the calendar: nothing may go while it still matters for a tax whose assessment period is open (§ 147(3) AO). A year that is still being audited, under objection or not yet assessed is not one to shred.
Possible change ahead: in its action plan of 16 July 2026 against tax crime, the Federal Ministry of Finance announced that the period for vouchers should go up to 15 years. That is a plan, not law. As of 22 October 2026 the law says 8.
7. Cash and cash registers
Cash leaves no bank trail, so the rules for it are stricter:
- Cash takings and cash payments are recorded daily, and each sale individually (§ 146(1) AO). A shop selling goods for cash to many customers it doesn't know, without an electronic till, is exempt from the one-by-one part.
- The cash in your records has to match the cash in the till, and be countable at any time.
- No law today makes you use an electronic cash register. If you use one, it needs a certified security device (TSE), it must give every customer a receipt, and it must be reported to the Finanzamt through ELSTER within a month of buying it or taking it out of use (§ 146a AO). Reporting began on 1 January 2025; registers bought before 1 July 2025 had to be reported by 31 July 2025.
Also ahead: on 23 September 2026 the federal cabinet approved a bill that would make an electronic cash register compulsory from 1 January 2028 for businesses with more than €100,000 turnover, exempting those with under €12,000 of cash takings a year, and replace paper receipts with digital ones from 2028. It is a bill, not yet law.
8. Keeping business and private apart
As a freelancer or sole trader, you and your business are the same person in law. Neither the Fiscal Code nor the Commercial Code requires a separate business bank account. Most people open one anyway, for a practical reason: the bank statements are vouchers you keep for 8 years, and with one account for everything they hold your private life too, and every payment has to be sorted.
Private money taken out of the business (Entnahmen) and private money put in (Einlagen) are recorded as such, not as expenses or income. Costs used both privately and for work, such as a phone, a car or home internet, need a split. How to split them is a question for a Steuerberater, with your own facts.
A GmbH or UG is different: it is a separate legal person (§ 13 GmbHG), and its money is not its shareholders'. Taking money out needs a basis, such as a salary, a dividend or a loan, and each is taxed in its own way. More in GmbH or UG.
9. Who may keep your books
You may always keep your own books. Doing tax work for other people as a business is reserved by the Tax Advisers Act (§§ 2, 5 StBerG), and it draws the line like this:
A bookkeeper may
- set up the chart of accounts;
- book current transactions;
- run current payroll;
- prepare the wage-tax return (Lohnsteuer-Anmeldung).
The person responsible needs a commercial vocational qualification and at least three years' bookkeeping practice at 16 hours a week or more (§ 6(1) No. 1 StBerG).
Only a Steuerberater may do for you
- VAT returns;
- the EÜR and the annual accounts;
- income, corporation and trade tax returns;
- dealing with the Finanzamt on your behalf.
Or a Steuerbevollmächtigter, or another profession the Act allows, such as a lawyer or auditor (§ 3 StBerG).
The fine line: typing figures into software is mechanical work and anyone may do it. Deciding which account a receipt belongs to (Kontieren) is not; it counts as tax help (§ 2(3) StBerG). Whether someone is a Steuerberater can be checked in the chambers' public register, the Steuerberaterverzeichnis. What advisors charge for this work, and how that is regulated, is in how Steuerberater fees work.
The order that works
- Work out which method applies: freelance or trade, company or not, and where you stand against €800,000 and €80,000.
- One place for every voucher, digital where it arrived digitally, with a fixed routine for scanning paper.
- Cash daily, everything else within ten days, or monthly with the receipts numbered and filed.
- Keep receipts 8 years and books and annual accounts 10, counted from the end of the year, and nothing from a year that is still open.
- A Steuerberater for the EÜR or annual accounts and the returns, and to look over your set-up while it is still easy to change.