Can I include expenses in my administration that I made during the period before my company was registered with the Chamber of Commerce?
This is what the Tax Authorities say about costs you incur in the start-up phase of setting up your company:
All costs that you have incurred for a company from a business point of view are deductible. This also includes costs incurred with the clear intention of establishing a business: costs that you incurred before the business started. Consider, for example, a market survey and advice obtained.
Once we consider you as an entrepreneur, you can, under certain conditions, deduct the VAT that you have paid as input tax in your sales tax return. It is also possible that you can still make retroactive use of the special schemes for entrepreneurs for income tax purposes.
Keep a record of the hours you spend on the business. You can count the number of hours that you already spend on your company before registering as an entrepreneur towards the minimum number of hours required for, for example, the self-employed person's allowance. If you receive benefits, for example unemployment benefits, it can also be important to keep track of how many hours you spend on your company.
Practice
Keep all invoices, receipts and supporting documents for the costs you incur. For example, you can still make retroactive use of the schemes for entrepreneurs for income tax purposes. In some cases, you can (sometimes) deduct the VAT that you paid before you started your business as input tax in your sales tax return. We can include this in the first VAT return. If this happens later, it is a bit more complex, but it can go along with the supplementation. This means that you enter it on the date of purchase or in the current financial year. In both cases, report this explicitly in the description of the publication in The Bookie Webapp and with us.
Keep in mind that we can charge extra costs for this, if this entails extra work. Together with your Bookie you can consider whether this is worthwhile. You can also do this yourself by writing a letter to the Tax and Customs Administration stating that you have incurred start-up costs.
Examples
- Travel expenses or mileage claims. Read here how to declare these kilometers as an expense.
- Laptop (partly, unless you can state that it was strictly business)
- Telephone charges, website or hosting
- Business lunch / dinners (limited deductible)
- Study costs / courses
- Legal costs
- Literature, books or reference work