Deductible business costs in the Netherlands

Which business costs are deductible in the Netherlands?

Costs you make for your business are deducted from your revenue, some only partly. The Belastingdienst looks at why you made the cost, not at how much you spent¹. A handful of categories are subject to a percentage or a threshold instead.

This page covers the cost categories a freelancer or a small business runs into. For each one it names the share you can deduct. It does not cover the entrepreneur schemes that come after your costs. Those are the zelfstandigenaftrek (the self-employed deduction) and the mkb-winstvrijstelling (the SME profit exemption). Our page about the self-employed deduction covers those amounts. Personal deductions, from healthcare costs to donations, are a separate set with their own rules.

Take Selin, a freelance photographer in Rotterdam. In her first full year she spends €7,350 on things she believes are business costs. Her list varies from train travel and car kilometres to client lunches and a congress fee. It also includes a few books, a logo jacket, her workroom at home and a new camera body. We use her list throughout this page and work it out in full further down.

What turns a payment into a business cost?

Your reason for making it decides, not the amount you spent. That test sits underneath every rule further down this page. The Belastingdienst accepts a cost when you clearly made it for the business interests of your company¹. You choose what your business spends and how much. The tax office normally stays out of that.

There is one limit on that freedom. Your costs can run very high compared with the business interest they serve. The Belastingdienst may then test whether the two are still in reasonable proportion.

Some costs carry both a business and a private side. Only the business share of those mixed costs comes off your profit¹. Selin's lunches with clients and her congress fee both belong to that group.

One more thing decides the amount you write down. When you can reclaim the VAT on a cost, you deduct the amount excluding VAT. When you cannot reclaim it, you deduct the amount including VAT¹. And one line still separates a cost from an investment.

How much of each cost can you deduct?

Most costs come off in full, a handful only in part. Business travel, professional literature and work clothing with your logo on it all come off for the full amount². Food, entertainment, congresses and seminars each are subject to a percentage or a threshold². A workspace in your own home sits at zero, along with your home phone line.

The table below sets out the categories a freelancer or a small business meets most often. Each row names the share you can deduct.

How do the limits on food, entertainment and seminars work?

You choose: deduct 80% of these costs or everything above €5,700. The table gives the shares. This is the one place where you get a choice. The Belastingdienst applies this treatment to two categories². The first is business gifts of food, drink, tobacco and alcohol. The second is representation, conferences, seminars and study trips, which also covers receptions and promotional gifts². For income tax the alternative percentage is 80%.

Travel and accommodation for those events fall inside that second category, capped at €1,500².

Under the threshold route the first €5,700 does not count. Everything above it does². Selin spends €1,150 on client lunches and €480 on a one-day congress fee, so €1,630 in total. That total stays well under €5,700, so the threshold route would leave her with nothing. At 80% she deducts €1,304. The €5,700 threshold adds both categories together across the year, not each one separately.

Can you deduct a workspace in your own home?

Almost never, and the exception has a high bar. The rule is short, but the exception is where it gets interesting. Costs for a workspace in your own home usually stay outside your profit calculation³. Only a qualifying workspace, a zelfstandige werkruimte, opens the door.

A workspace qualifies when it stands apart from the rest of the house. The Belastingdienst weighs factors such as a separate entrance, its own sanitary facilities and whether you could rent it out³. A desk in the living room or a bedroom turned into an office does not qualify.

Selin works from the spare room of her rented flat. She pays €1,800 a year in rent for the square metres she uses. None of it comes off her revenue. Renting a studio elsewhere would be a different story, because rent for business premises is an ordinary business cost.

The Belastingdienst has its own tool for this, the hulpmiddel Werkruimte in de woning. Run it before you count a single euro of your rent or your mortgage. You can find that tool on belastingdienst.nl³.

What does a full year of costs look like?

Of the €7,350 she spent, €2,824 plus the camera depreciation comes off Selin's revenue. The rules so far explain every line of that gap. The table below runs through each cost under the 2026 rules, with what comes off her revenue.

The difference sits in three lines. Her lunches and congress fee run down from €1,630 to €1,304 under the 80% rule. Her workroom gives her nothing, because it is not self-contained.

Her €2,400 camera body does not disappear. She depreciates it over at least five years, up to €480 a year. The first year counts from the month she bought it. That amount comes off her profit through business assets and depreciation, together with the investment allowance. Most cost lists have two or three lines that are genuinely arguable.

Where do cost deductions sit in your final tax bill?

They come off first, before any entrepreneur scheme touches your profit. Selin's €2,824 is therefore not the end of the sum. Each step works on what the step before it left. You start with your turnover and subtract your business costs. What remains is your profit from the business.

The entrepreneur schemes come next. Meet the hours test and you subtract a fixed amount from that profit, the zelfstandigenaftrek. In your first years a second fixed amount can come on top, the startersaftrek (the starter's deduction). A fixed share of whatever is left then stays untaxed under the mkb-winstvrijstelling. We keep the amounts and conditions for those schemes on our page about the self-employed deduction. That way you always read the figures for the right year. Do you meet the hours test at all? We answer that on the page about qualifying as an entrepreneur for income tax.

Only the amount that remains after every step reaches the income tax brackets. That is why a clean cost list is worth more than it looks: it lowers the base each later step works on.

What should you do with your own cost list?

Sort your costs into three groups: full, partial and none. Selin's year shows how quickly that sorting changes the outcome. Put travel, professional literature and logo work clothing in the first group. Put food, entertainment and events in the second group and expect to work with 80%. Put your home workspace, your general reading and your everyday clothes in the third.

Two questions are left after that sorting. Does anything on your list cost more than €450 and last longer than a year? Then it belongs on the depreciation route. Can you reclaim the VAT? Then the amount you deduct is the one excluding VAT. Our page about the VAT return covers that side.

Selin is left with €2,824 off her revenue after these rules, and a camera that keeps paying her back for years. Your own list will look different. A photographer, a plumber and a copywriter each keep a different set of receipts. The categories behind them are the same. That is the benefit of a well-kept cost list: less guessing at the year end and more room for the work you actually want to do. Some costs sit abroad or come from before you registered your business. Keep those on a separate line for your adviser. We go through foreign and pre-registration costs with you on the call.

What we take off your hands at filing time is on our page about the self-employed tax return.