Travel costs are one of the easiest deductions to claim and one of the easiest to claim wrongly. The rules are not complex, but they turn on one question you have to answer honestly: was this trip there because your work required it, or was it happening anyway?
Public transport: the amount on your ticket
The simplest case. Travel by train, bus, tram or metro for your work and the fare is deductible. Keep the ticket or the transaction, and note why you made that trip.
That last part is not excessive. A run of train journeys in your records with no indication of purpose is a run of question marks in an audit. One line per journey, with destination and reason, makes it a closed file.
By car: a fixed amount per kilometre
If you drive a car that is privately owned, you deduct a fixed amount per business kilometre. The Belastingdienst, the Dutch tax authority, sets that amount and it has changed in recent years, so check the rate for the year you drove in.
That fixed amount covers everything: fuel, maintenance, insurance, depreciation. You cannot add a fuel receipt on top. That is the most common double count we come across.
What to record per journey:
- The date
- The starting point and the destination
- The number of kilometres
- The business reason
Put the car into the business and the whole picture changes: the actual car costs become deductible and an addition for private use stands against them. Whether that works out favourably depends on the value of the car and how much you drive for business. For most creators with an ordinary car and limited business kilometres, the per-kilometre allowance is simpler and often better. Have it calculated before you put a car into the business, because reversing it is awkward.
Staying overnight
If a shoot or assignment means staying somewhere, the accommodation costs are business costs. Hotel, apartment, the cost of the accommodation.
Food and drink is a category of its own. Business meals are only partly deductible: a limitation applies to this kind of cost, so part of it does not count. Your own lunch on an ordinary working day at home is not deductible at all, because you would eat anyway.
The real question: was the trip business?
The whole subject sits here. The test is not whether you filmed, but whether the trip existed because of your work. Two examples to see the line.
Clearly business. You travel to Rotterdam for a content day with a photographer you hired. There is a booked studio, an arrangement made, an invoice from the photographer and a day with a programme. Travel and any overnight stay are business costs.
Clearly not business. You book a week in Lisbon because you want to be there, and make content while you are there. The trip would have happened without the content. That is a private trip you worked on, not a business trip.
The difficult case sits in between: a trip with a clear business part and a clear private part. For such a mixed trip the question is which part is attributable to your work. Where a trip is predominantly private, the main rule is that the travel costs are not deductible, even though work happened along the way. Where the trip is predominantly business with a private tail, more is possible.
What helps substantiate it: a programme you set down in advance. Which days were shoot days, with whom, where, with what result. A trip with three full shoot days and two free days is a different story from a trip with ten free days and one morning of filming.
What else you can deduct on a content day
The travel is one item. A content day usually carries more:
- The rental of a studio or location
- The photographer, videographer or assistant you hire
- Make-up and styling you hire
- Props, decor and materials used that day
- Transport of equipment
- Fees to others who take part
These items are all entirely business and beyond discussion, unlike the travel itself, which sometimes needs explaining. We see content days in records where only the train tickets were entered and the studio rental was not.
A worked example
A creator organises four content days in a year. Two in her own city, two elsewhere with an overnight stay.
Per day elsewhere: 180 kilometres return, a night at 95 euro, studio rental of 150 euro, a photographer at 350 euro. The kilometres at the fixed rate come to a few tens of euro, depending on that year's rate.
Across four days this runs to well over 2,000 euro of deductible costs, most of which is not the travel but the services hired in and the location. That is the ratio to keep in view: the travel is the item that attracts the discussion and the smallest amount.
Your mileage record without it becoming work
The mileage record is the deduction that most often falls, not because the journeys were not business but because nothing was written down. What suffices is one line per journey with four facts: date, from where to where, number of kilometres, and the reason.
What makes it credible is not the form but the timing. A list kept on the day looks different from a list made in April: irregular numbers, real destinations, and a reason that ties to something else in your file. A journey to Rotterdam on 14 March alongside an invoice from a Rotterdam studio dated the same day is a closed line.
Two mistakes to avoid. Recording a fuel receipt next to the per-kilometre allowance is a double count, because the fixed amount already covers fuel. And commuting does not exist as a separate category for a business with no fixed workplace; the question per journey is whether it was business.
Planning content days so they are substantiated
For a trip with a business and a private part, the deduction stands or falls on what you set down in advance. Afterwards every trip is a story; in advance it is a programme.
What to record for a content day or a trip with shoots, and this is five minutes' work:
- Which days are shoot days, and which are not
- Who you are working with, and the arrangement or invoice that goes with it
- Where you are recording, and the booking for that location
- What the result had to be: how much content, for which platform
A trip with three full shoot days, a booked studio, a hired photographer and a result that is online is a different case from a ten-day trip with one morning of filming. In the first the discussion is about the ratio between business and private; in the second the discussion is whether anything was business.
On location with several people
Working with others on a content day brings costs that are entirely business and often go uninvoiced because it is handled informally:
- The fee to a fellow creator taking part
- Travel costs you reimburse for someone else
- A model, an actor or an assistant
- Catering on set, with the limitation that applies to food and drink
The same holds for all four: without an invoice or proof of payment it is not a cost. So ask for one, even for small amounts and even from people you know. And with ongoing arrangements, watch the question of whether it is an assignment or in fact employment, because that distinction follows from the facts and can produce an assessment.
Frequently asked questions
I travel to a trade fair or a creator event. Deductible?
If the event is business and you are there for your work, yes. Admission, travel and accommodation. Keep the ticket and the programme.
Can I deduct the trip to my accountant?
Yes, that is a business appointment.
I film while travelling on holiday. Can I deduct part of it?
For a trip that is predominantly private, the main rule is that the trip is not deductible. Costs you incurred specifically for the shoot, hiring equipment locally for instance, sit separately from that.
How long do I keep my mileage record?
Seven years, like the rest of your records.
I always use my partner's car. Can I still claim kilometres?
For business journeys in a car that is not owned by your business you can in principle apply the fixed per-kilometre amount. Who owns it matters less than whether the journey was business and whether you recorded it.
Travelling abroad for work
A shoot or collaboration across the border works the same as inside the Netherlands: the travel, the accommodation and the costs on the ground are business costs if the trip existed because of your work. Two practical points come on top.
Costs in another currency are converted to euro at the rate on the day of the expense. Booking a dollar receipt at a yearly average is less accurate and, at larger amounts, noticeably so.
And VAT on foreign costs cannot simply be reclaimed in your Dutch return. For VAT paid in another EU country there is a separate refund procedure, with its own deadlines and a minimum amount. For a single hotel night it is not worth it; for a week-long shoot with equipment hired locally it can be. So keep those receipts apart rather than recording them among your Dutch costs.
In closing
Travel costs are simple as long as you do two things: record every journey with a reason, and be honest about whether the trip existed because of your work. And put your attention on the items around a content day, because there is more deduction there than in the journey to it.
The full list of deductions is in what can you deduct as a content creator.