§ 26-03 General.
RCNY § 26-03
(a)A taxpayer shall maintain all records that are necessary to a determination of the correct tax liability under Chapters 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 11, 13 and of the Administrative Code of the City of New York. All required records must be made available on request by the Department or its authorized representatives as provided for in §§ 11-518, 11-687, 11-707, 11-805, 11-902, 11-1103, 11-1307 and 11-2503 of the Administrative Code of the City of New York. Such records shall include, but not be necessarily limited to permanent books of account or record, including inventories where applicable, as are sufficient to establish the amount of gross income, deductions, credits and other matters required to be shown by the taxpayer in any tax return required under the above chapters of the Administrative Code.
(b)If a taxpayer retains records required to be retained under these rules in both machine-sensible and hard copy formats, the taxpayer shall make the records available to the Department in machine-sensible format upon request of the Department.
(c)Nothing in this section shall prevent the Department from requesting hard copy printouts in lieu of retained machine-sensible records at the time of examination.
(d)Hard copy records generated at the time of a transaction using a credit or debit card must be retained unless all the details necessary to determine correct tax liability relating to the transaction are subsequently received and retained by the taxpayer in accordance with these rules. Such details include those listed in 19 RCNY § 26-04(b)(1).
(e)Computer printouts that are created for validation, control, or other temporary purposes need not be retained.
(f)Nothing in these rules shall be construed to prohibit a taxpayer from demonstrating tax compliance with traditional hard copy documents or reproductions thereof, in whole or in part, whether or not such taxpayer also has retained or has the capability to retain records on electronic or other storage media in accordance with these rules. However, this subdivision shall not relieve the taxpayer of the obligation to comply with subdivision (b).
(g)Except as otherwise provided in this section, the provisions of these rules do not relieve taxpayers of the responsibility to retain hard copy records that are created or received in the ordinary course of business as required by existing law and regulations. Hard copy records may be retained on a recordkeeping medium as provided in 19 RCNY § 26-06.
(h)Every taxpayer should make periodic checks on all records being retained for use by the Department. If any records required to be retained are subsequently lost, destroyed, damaged or found to be incomplete or materially inaccurate, the taxpayer must recreate the files within a reasonable period of time.
