Company Laws

Companies Ordinance S.121(3A) stipulates that "any books of account which a company is required by this section to keep shall be preserved by it for 7 years from the end of the financial year to which the last entry made or matter recorded therein relates."

Inland Revenue Ordinance S.51C (1) stipulates that "every person carrying on a trade, profession or business in Hong Kong shall keep sufficient records in the English or Chinese language of his income and expenditure to enable the assessable profits of such trade, profession or business to be readily ascertained and shall retain such records for a period of not less than 7 years after the completion of the transactions, acts or operations to which they relate."

Therefore,
1. It is clear by both company law and tax law, you need to keep records for 7 years.

2. However, "records" includes-
(a) books of account (whether kept in a legible form, or in a non-legible form by means of a computer or otherwise) recording receipts and payments, or income and expenditure; and
(b) vouchers, bank statements, invoices, receipts, and such other documents as are necessary to verify the entries in the books of account.
That means you may have other documents say contracts, statement of accounts etc that can prove and verify the transactions. Invoice is only one of the acceptable documents.

3. Furthermore, if a company does not keep copy of all invoices, it is not in breach of law. As I quoted above, the law does not specify the keeping of invoices. It mentioned "records" and "books of accounts". Again, if you have other documents that can serve the same purpose to verify the transactions, it is OK to destroy the invoices any time. Do not forget there are businesses that do not have invoices at all, e.g. restaurant, bar etc.

But it not very likely that IRD or the company's auditor requires the company to present its invoices years ago, unless the concerned amount is significant.

The area is covered by the Inland Revenue Ordinance. All companies have to keep records (including all the invoices) for 7 years. You can refer to the Inland Revenue Department's website for more details:

http://www.ird.gov.hk/chi/tax/bus_rke.htm

Once the Inland Revenue Department discovers a company breaches the rule, the current maximum penalty is HK$100,000.