Almost every creator who sits down with us is leaving money on the table. Not because the rules are complicated, but because nobody ever explained that the ringlight, half your internet subscription and the train to a shoot can all come off your profit. You pay tax on your profit, not your turnover, and the difference between the two is exactly the list below.
This article walks category by category through what you can deduct, where the limit sits and where the Belastingdienst, the Dutch tax authority, pulls you back. Where an amount or percentage changes from year to year we say so, so you check the current figure rather than trusting ours.
The main rule: business, and you have to be able to explain it
A cost is deductible if it is a business cost: you incur it with your business in mind. That is a wider test than people think, and at the same time a stricter one. Wider, because you do not have to prove an expense directly produced turnover. A camera you buy and never earn anything with stays deductible. Stricter, because when there is doubt you have to be able to explain why that expense belongs to your work.
Two concepts are worth separating, because they decide how an expense lands in your books:
- Costs come off your profit in full in the year you incur them. Your internet subscription, your software, the train tickets.
- Investments are things that last several years and exceed a certain threshold. You spread those over their useful life, which is called depreciation. Your camera, your laptop, your PC.
That distinction is not accounting pedantry: it decides whether a 1,400 euro purchase is fully deductible this year or spread across five. We go into it fully in camera, laptop and ringlight: deduct or depreciate.
Equipment and tech
For most creators this is the largest item, and the easiest to substantiate. Anything you make or publish content with belongs here:
- Camera, lenses, gimbal, action cam
- Microphones, audio interface, headphones
- Lights, ringlights, softboxes, backdrops, green screen
- Laptop, desktop, second monitor, stream deck, capture card
- Phone and tablet, for the business share
- Storage: external drives, NAS, memory cards
- Furniture belonging to the workspace: desk, chair, tripods
The phone is where it most often goes wrong. You use it for work and privately, so you deduct the business share. You have to be able to argue that percentage. If you mostly use it to film, to post and to talk to fans or brands, a high percentage is well defensible. Do not invent a round number with no story behind it: in an audit the question is not which percentage you picked, but what you based it on.
Software and subscriptions
Often underestimated, because they are small amounts debited monthly and so they slip out of view. Together they mount up quickly:
- Editing software and photo editing
- Music licences and sound libraries, exactly the kind of subscription people forget
- Cloud storage
- Scheduling tools, link tools, newsletter software
- The paid tier of a platform or tool you need for your work
- VPN, password manager, two-factor hardware
- Your website: domain, hosting, theme, plug-ins
Streaming subscriptions are the borderline case. A music service you use for background music in your streams is defensible. A film service you watch on the sofa in the evening is not, even if you occasionally post about it. The criterion stays the same: can you explain that the expense exists because your business exists.
Internet, phone costs and energy
If you work from home, these items behave differently from the rest. For a home the Belastingdienst assumes you would have had it anyway. For internet and energy you therefore often end up with a business share rather than the full amount, and sometimes with nothing. What is and is not allowed hangs on whether your workspace counts fiscally as an independent space. That is a story of its own, written up in deducting a workspace at home as a creator.
If you rent a studio, an office or a co-working desk it is simple: that rent and the energy costs with it are fully business.
Clothing, make-up and grooming
The category with the most misconceptions, and the only one where the law explicitly closes a door. Clothing is in principle not deductible, even if you only wear it for content. There is a narrow exception for work clothing meeting strict conditions, and for most creators their wardrobe does not fall under it.
That does not mean nothing is possible. Props, costumes and set pieces you clearly do not use outside your content sit differently from a dress that could also go to a wedding. Because this is where creators lose the most money to wrong assumptions, the full explanation is in deducting clothing, lingerie and cosmetics: where the line sits.
Travel and transport
Travel for a shoot, a collaboration, a trade fair or a recording is a business cost. By public transport that is the amount on your ticket. By private car you claim a fixed amount per business kilometre, set annually by the Belastingdienst. That amount changes regularly, so check the current rate before closing a year.
There are two conditions people skip. You have to keep a record of your business kilometres, with date, destination and reason, and you have to be able to tie the trip to your work. A content day in another city is easy to substantiate. A weekend away where some photos happened is not. More on that in travel costs and content days: what you can deduct on the road.
Services you hire in
Everything you outsource is an ordinary business cost, and this is the category creators doubt least and keep invoices for least often:
- Editors, photographers, videographers
- A virtual assistant or chatter
- Graphic work: thumbnails, overlays, logos
- Advertising and promotion
- Your accountant, and legal or tax advice
- Insurance belonging to your business
If someone works for you structurally, the question is whether it is an assignment or in fact employment. That distinction is not yours to make but follows from the facts, and it can produce an assessment. When in doubt it is worth a conversation before the arrangement has run a year.
What definitely does not fit
A short list, because deducting wrongly costs you more than not deducting:
- Fines, from a traffic fine to a tax penalty
- Your own income tax
- Private drawings from your business: that is not a cost, that is your money going to you
- Cosmetic procedures, except in exceptional situations, and then with a good story
- Food and drink for yourself during an ordinary working day
- General gym memberships
A worked example
Say you make 42,000 euro of turnover in a year across two platforms. Your costs: 1,100 euro of equipment you can deduct in full that year, 640 euro of software and subscriptions, 900 euro for an editor, 310 euro of travel, 240 euro for the business share of your phone and 780 euro of depreciation on a camera you bought last year.
That is 3,970 euro of costs together. Your profit from the business comes to 38,030 euro instead of 42,000. That difference of almost 4,000 euro is the amount you pay no income tax on, and it consists mostly of things you had already spent. What you net from it depends on your rate and on the entrepreneur allowances you qualify for, which is exactly what the next article covers: the zelfstandigenaftrek and the hours criterion.
What to keep for this
A deduction without a receipt is not a deduction in an audit. Concretely that means: an invoice or receipt per expense, a bank statement showing the payment, and for items you deduct partly, a short note on why you arrived at that percentage. That note takes two minutes and in an audit it is the difference between a conversation and a correction.
The retention period is seven years. That applies to digital receipts too, and a message with a photo of a till receipt is valid record-keeping as long as it is legible and findable.
The five items missing most often
The records we take over produce roughly the same list of things that were not in them every time. Not the exotic items, but these five:
- The platform commission. Because it was recorded net instead of gross. For a creator with 40,000 euro of turnover and twenty percent commission, that is 8,000 euro of deduction nobody claimed.
- Small subscriptions. Music licences, cloud storage, a scheduling tool, a link tool. A few euro each, hundreds a year together.
- Props, sets and decor. Usually because someone heard clothing is not deductible and drew the conclusion too widely.
- Depreciation on equipment from earlier years. Because there was no asset register and nobody knew what the book value still was.
- Costs from before registration. The camera bought six months earlier, when this was not yet a business.
Together this is almost always more than anyone hoped to gain from the items that are actually debatable.
Mixed use: how to substantiate a percentage
Phone, internet, a laptop used privately as well: for those you deduct a share, and the question is always which share. There is no table to read it off, so you have to argue it.
What counts as good substantiation:
- A concrete story about how you use it. "I film with it, post with it and handle my DMs on it" is one.
- A sample. Track your usage split for a week and take that as the basis for the year.
- A second device or subscription you use privately, which lets the business share of the first be high.
What is not substantiation: a round percentage with no story. In an audit the question is not which percentage you took, but what you based it on. Two minutes of note-taking at the moment you decide, and that question is answered.
Where the deduction stops for food, drink and entertaining
A category with its own rule many people do not know. Business costs for food, drink, entertaining and certain forms of hospitality are only partly deductible: a limitation applies so that part of it does not count, even when the expense was entirely business.
For creators this comes up with a lunch with a brand, catering on a set and a business dinner. Those expenses do belong in your records, they are simply not deducted in full. Your own lunch on an ordinary working day falls outside the category and is not deductible at all, because you would have eaten anyway.
The practical advice: record these separately rather than among general costs. Then the limitation at year-end is a calculation instead of a search.
Frequently asked questions
Can I still deduct costs from before I registered?
Often yes. Costs you incurred to set up your business, even before you registered, can usually still be taken. Think of the camera you bought six months earlier when you did not yet know this would become something. So keep the receipts from that period too.
Do I have to pay for everything from a business account?
It is not a legal requirement for a sole trader, but it saves so much sorting that we always advise it. A separate account turns your bookkeeping into sorting rather than reconstructing.
I have deducted nothing for two years. Can I still put that right?
Usually yes. A return already filed can be revised, and that happens more often than you would think. See putting a backlog of returns right for how that works.
Does this list apply if I still have a job?
Yes. As soon as your income counts as profit from a business, the same rules apply, whether or not you also work in employment. Whether your income is at that point yet is covered in hobby or business.
In closing
The point is not to deduct as much as possible. The point is to forget nothing you had already spent, and to claim nothing you cannot explain. The first costs you money; the second costs you more.
We do this for creators on OnlyFans, F2F, Twitch and YouTube and every other platform, for a fixed monthly price. How that works in practice is on how we work.