Libya

Statutory Books

Business entities operating in Libya are required by Libyan Law to maintain a General Ledger and a General Journal (i.e. the Statutory Books).

Before use, these must be stamped as registered with the Revenue Authorities and the Commercial Court. It should be noted that a Ledger or Journal will not be registered if it already contains accounting entries (i.e. one cannot register existing books of account).

Similarly, transactions pre-dating the date the books are registered will be disallowed. In theory, transactions should be entered daily, but in practice, most companies write up their statutory records on the basis of monthly transactions summaries.

The Tax Inspector will always request production of the Statutory Books at the commencement of a tax audit. If these are not available, a perfunctory audit of the English (or other language) books of account will be made, and it is likely that there will be a punitive increase in taxable income as a consequence.

The Commercial Code allows approved computer-based ledgers to be used instead of the traditional manual ledgers.