Legal Obligation - Archiving Emails for Years from a Business Perspective
In Germany and many other countries around the world, legislation requires that critical emails from a business perspective and tax-related documents be stored and archived for a certain period of time. The storage period varies not only from country to country, but also depending on the type and content of the document to be stored.
Which documents should be retained?
In Germany, especially the tax code regulates which documents and records must be kept. In addition, there are other regulations that require documents to be kept. For example, Section 257 of the German Commercial Code (HGB), Section 8 of the Money Laundering Act, and Section 50 of the Federal Lawyers' Regulation (BRAO) regulate this.
According to Section 147 (1) of the Tax Code (AO), books and records, inventories, annual financial statements, management reports, opening balance sheets and the working instructions necessary to understand these, as well as other organizational documents, received commercial or business letters, copies of sent commercial or business letters, accounting documents, documents under Articles 15 (1) and 163 of the Customs Union Code, and other documents necessary for taxation purposes must be kept. This includes invoices, offers, order confirmations, defect reports, complaint letters, payment receipts, contracts and all correspondence related to the preparation, conclusion, processing or reversal of a transaction, but not limited to these.
It is not important whether these documents and correspondence are sent or received by post or email, as they are today. Email attachments must also be kept if the email without these attachments would be incomprehensible or incomplete. Otherwise, that is, if the email is only used to transmit an attachment, the email itself is not subject to retention - but the relevant attachment must be kept.
This information is confirmed by "Principles on the retention of books, records and documents in electronic form and on the proper management and retention of data access" or shortly GoBD, an administrative regulation issued by the Federal Ministry of Finance, which contains requirements for collecting and processing tax-related data in electronic form and is valid for all taxpayers, self-employed professionals, and freelancers.
For how long should documents be retained?
The retention periods are derived from, among others, Sections 257 (4) and (5) of the German Commercial Code (HGB) and Sections 147 (3) and (4) of the German Tax Code. It should not be forgotten that the time limits begin from the end of the calendar year in which the documents were created, received, sent, or last processed. Example: For a document created in June 2024, the ten-year retention period officially begins on December 31, 2024 and ends on December 31, 2034 (provided no change is allowed until that time) and can be destroyed from January 2035 onwards. If the documents to be retained are subject to change at a certain time, the retention period starts again at the end of the year.
10-Year Retention Obligation: Books, records, inventories, annual accounts, management reports, opening balance sheets, working instructions and other organizational documents necessary to understand these, as well as documents referred to in Articles 15 (1) and 163 of the Customs Union Code.
8-Year Retention - NEW!!: The eight-year retention period was introduced at the beginning of this year (2025) as part of the Fourth Administrative Assistance Act (BEG IV-E) and includes documents such as accounting receipts and vouchers.
6-Year Retention Period: Received commercial or business letters, copies of sent commercial or business letters, and other documents related to taxation purposes should generally be kept for six years.
Email Archiving Helps to Meet Retention Periods
A professional email archiving solution can help meet the legally required retention periods for business-critical documents and information contained in emails and email attachments. A prerequisite for this is the ability to configure individual retention rules within the archiving software. This allows the administrator full control over how long different types of emails should be archived. In addition, the administrator can decide whether emails should be automatically deleted from the archive and when they should be deleted.
The final delivery date has passed - what about now?
If the retention periods are followed, the relevant documents can be destroyed. However, it should be noted that the destruction of data is carried out in accordance with guidelines. For this purpose, a special software that deletes data without recovery options or permanently overwrites specific memory areas is used. Physical data carriers such as hard drives, CDs, or USB sticks can also be physically destroyed by shredders or with the help of specialized service providers.
Conclusion - Archive Your Emails
Use email archiving to meet the legal requirements for retaining business-critical email data and also benefit from other advantages beyond retention periods. Our professional email archiving solution, MailStore Server, is offered free of charge for 30 days.