Having your company registered at your home address brings always the question of the deduction home office costs. There are strict rules about costs of a home office and recently new jurisprudence in line with the rules has been published. How does it work?
If you have an office in your home, that can be accessed independently from your home, that has a mailbox, bathroom facilities and could be rented to a third party person/company. Then you have a office at home for which you can deduct the costs. Basically no normal Dutch home meets these requirements.
Should you nevertheless meet the requirements, then you can only deduct the costs of the home office if 30% of your turnover is actually made in that office and 70% from that office. And you cannot have a desk somewhere outside your home office.
Is it possible to deduct home office costs in the Netherlands?
In the recent published case a person renting a house, deducted costs for the home office. This tax payer claimed to use the entire house as office, except for the attic. And most likely, but not stated in the article, you can access the attic without going through the house. That is possible in apartment buildings with individual attics at the top of the stairs. Not only was the statement that the house was used as office and not as living area very much doubted by the court, neither was there a difference between living and working spaces in the house. The house was so much decorated as a living space, that an independent working space could not be determined.
If you rent a house, and the working space qualifies and the activities qualify, we see the purpose of deduction costs via your company. But if you own the house we only see problems. You can already deduct the largest costs, the mortgage. The advantage would only be the utility costs which are basically mickey mouse compared to the result. The result is that you allocated a part of the house as business. Hence if you ever sell the house, or stop the company, you need to pay capital gain tax over the profit you make at the sale. Under normal circumstances we do not know capital gain tax.
