Qatar Income Tax: Obligation to Prepare and Preserve Books of Accounts

Accounting helps to ascertain the profits of the business. Whether small or large, every business needs to maintain a proper accounting system to ascertain its financial position. It also helps the interested parties to decide on the progress of the business productivity.

 

Every business in Qatar has to give top priority in preparing and preserving the books of accounts of their transactions.

 

Article 35 of the Executive regulation of income tax law promulgated by law no (24) of 2018 is clearly making it obligatory for all taxpayers (please note that taxpayer does not mean the person who is liable to pay tax) engaged in an activity to keep accounting books, records and documents related to the said activities in accordance with the laws and accounting standards in force.

Therefore, business entities have to prepare the following :

• General journal
• General ledger
• Inventory register
• Asset register, etc. 

 

Further, the business entities have to keep all other documents such as bills, invoices, agreements, expense vouchers, receipt vouchers, etc.

 

Also, Taxpayer in Qatar  is obliged to keep in place of practicing the activity in books, records and documents for a period of 10 years ( Ref: Article 36, Para 1 - Executive Regulation )

 

Article 24 para 5 of Law no 24 of 2018 Income Tax law States that:

“Every Taxpayer who violates the provisions of presenting the final audited accounts, keeping accounting books, and keeping them stipulated in this law and the regulations, shall be subject to a financial penalty of ( 30,000 ) Thirty Thousand Riyals”.

 

Preparing and maintaining the accounts is not only the important thing, it is vital that How you are recording and maintaining them. methods of bookkeeping like  recording in manual note-books or only just keeping an excel sheet possess several drawbacks. It includes the risk of data loss, limits accessibility and consumes time.

Bookkeeping using computer or cloud based accounting software are the recommended ways of modern day bookkeeping. There are many advantages from adapting this method.
Some of the benefits are:

 

• Enhanced Accessibility ( Cloud based softwares )
• Customized and value adding Reports
• Can store Data for many years 
• Helps to back-up valuable data and reduces the threat of data loss.. And more.

For more details Please Contact : 30947609, 31238818