The dog ate my bookkeeping excuse is often used, and never successful. I tried to feed our dog one piece of bookkeeping, but he refused. Let alone the full bookkeeping
The dog ate my bookkeeping excuse
This is about the entrepreneur who basically cooked the books in his or her advantage, assuming nobody would find out. The Dutch tax office has checks and balances in their system. If one of the checks turns odd, a flag goes up. The result of that flag is a questionnaire send to the entrepreneur.
The entrepreneur is asked by the Dutch tax office to substantiate a couple of claims made in either the entrepreneurs income tax return or Value Added Tax return. Part of cooking the books is that you cannot substantiate anything, as that is the whole point of cooking the books.
The only reply in such situations is that the dog ate my bookkeeping excuse. Which is ofcourse laughingly dismissed by the Dutch tax office.
The dog ate my bookkeeping excuse audit court case
In line of the above the Dutch tax office started an audit with a photographer for the period 2013-2016. We assume the checks and balance raised a flag causing the audit.
The photographer was asked to provide the bookkeeping and he stated he could not. The bookkeeping was stolen from his motor vehicle while parked.
The Dutch tax office can be very practical. He claimed large VAT amounts we assume, for photo equipment. He failed to provide the invoices, so the next question is: how did you afford to pay for the substantial costs? The money was loaned from family and friends and ofcourse there were no loan agreements.
That is not common, but also not that strange. The tax office simply asked to show the equipment purchased with the money loaned from friends and family of the books were stolen from the car. That was a problem. He had been in a divorce and his ex wife has put in the garbage all of his photo equipment.
In court the tax office claimed back EUR 24.981 reclaimed VAT and EUR 2.498 in penalties. The photographer claimed in court that none what had happened to him was his fault at all. Hence the penalty should be erased. The court did not agree with that.
Tax is exciting
We think tax is exciting. I am not too font of taking out the trash, but my wife does see it as my task. In the above court case the wife had put the VAT value of EUR 24.981 with the garbage. That is the 21% of the total costs of the equipment she dragged to the bin. That is EUR 118.957 in photo equipment transported to the garbage. Must have been a very angry woman.
Then the money for these purchases was loaned from friends and family. Maybe it is me, but I do not have such friend. And finally, the bookkeeping was stolen from the car. If all true, it is indeed a very sad situation. Then again, if you spend so much on equipment, you should be able to remember where it was purchased and request for a copy of the invoices. As suggested by the court.
In other words, think twice before you assume you can out clever the Dutch tax office.
