VAT Return for Your Webshop: A Quarterly Step-by-Step Guide

A smooth VAT return starts with complete records. Make sure you have the following on hand before you start calculating:

• sales overviews from every channel: your own webshop, but also bol.com, Amazon, or other marketplaces
• all purchase invoices and receipts for the quarter, including digital subscriptions
• credit notes for returns and cancellations
• your previous return, so you can quickly spot any major discrepancies
• login details for the Belastingdienst's (Dutch Tax Administration) business portal

The biggest pitfall for webshops is incompleteness: one forgotten sales channel or a stack of unprocessed returns, and your figures no longer add up. business.gov.nl has an overview of your administrative obligations as a business owner, including what you need to keep and for how long.

Start by adding up all sales for the quarter, across every channel. Use your orders and invoices for this, not the payouts from marketplaces — those are already reduced by commission fees, so they'll understate your actual revenue.

Next, split that revenue by VAT rate:

• 21%: the standard rate, which applies to most products
• 9%: the reduced rate, covering items such as food and books
• 0%: applies to, among other things, exports outside the EU

On the return, you enter the revenue and corresponding VAT separately for each rate. Process returns as negative revenue under the same rate, so you don't end up paying too much VAT. Not sure which rate applies to a product? Check with the Belastingdienst instead of guessing — an incorrect rate carries through every quarter after that.

Input VAT is the VAT you've paid yourself on business expenses. You can deduct it from the VAT you owe. For a webshop, that typically includes:

• purchasing products and packaging materials
• shipping costs and fulfilment services
• software subscriptions, hosting, and marketing tools
• office costs and business equipment

The condition: you need a valid invoice with a VAT breakdown, made out to your business. For costs you also use privately, you can only deduct the business portion. Keep all purchase invoices digitally and process them throughout the quarter rather than in one stressful evening — otherwise you're guaranteed to miss receipts, and with them, deductions.

Do you sell to consumers in other EU countries — for example, Belgian customers through your webshop or bol.com? Then the EU threshold of €10,000 per calendar year applies to all your cross-border sales to consumers combined.

• Below the threshold: you can charge Dutch VAT, and everything runs through your regular return.
• Above the threshold: you charge the VAT rate of your customer's country and remit that VAT through the OSS scheme (the Union scheme), via a separate quarterly return.

OSS revenue therefore does not belong in your regular domestic boxes. Keep track of your EU revenue per country, so you can see when you're approaching the threshold and register for the Union scheme in time.

Most webshops file quarterly. Both the return and the payment must be in no later than the last day of the month following the end of the quarter: for the second quarter, that means filing by 31 July at the latest.

Here's how to go about it:

1. Log in to the Belastingdienst's business portal.
2. Enter your revenue and VAT per rate, plus your input VAT.
3. Check the balance: amount due or refund.
4. Submit the return and pay immediately, using the correct payment reference.

Filing or paying late can result in a fine, even if your net amount due is zero. So put the deadlines straight in your calendar — four fixed moments a year.

Most VAT mistakes at webshops don't happen while filling in the return — they happen in the weeks before: a forgotten channel, unprocessed returns, commissions that were never booked as costs, or EU revenue in the wrong box. The fix is bookkeeping that runs automatically throughout the quarter, instead of a reconstruction after the fact.

You can automate most of this. slimzaak, for example, connects directly with bol.com, Amazon, Shopify, and WooCommerce, automatically applies Dutch VAT rules to every order, processes returns as credit notes, and puts VAT summaries right alongside them that you can carry straight over into your quarterly return — including support for the OSS scheme on EU sales.

That turns filing your return into a fifteen-minute check instead of an evening spent puzzling over exports and spreadsheets.