Reporting foreign invoices in your VAT return

For your VAT return, you must declare the VAT on all your income and expenses, both domestic and foreign. Gekko automatically includes all your income in the VAT return. All you have to do is enter the correct customer details and apply the appropriate VAT rate on the invoice.

How does the VAT return work?

For domestic income, it's not that complicated. All VAT that you have to pay and that you can reclaim is automatically processed in your VAT report in Gekko.

Invoices

When invoicing customers in the Netherlands, you usually choose the 21% or 9% VAT rate. Sometimes you are exempt from VAT. In that case, you do not need to include the VAT in your VAT return.

Please note: only invoices that have been sent are included in Gekko's VAT report. Gekko does not include draft invoices. Customers are set to ‘Netherlands’ by default. If your customer is from abroad, it is important that you indicate this in your Gekko address book. In the next section, you can read why this is important.

Receipts and purchase invoices

Do you incur expenses for your business? If so, you can deduct the VAT on receipts and purchase invoices from the VAT you have to pay. This means you pay less tax. You can easily keep track of everything you buy in the Netherlands in your records using our Gekko Receipts app. Just take a photo, enter the amount and VAT, and your receipt will be automatically saved in your online account.

Reporting foreign invoices in your VAT return

If you send invoices to customers abroad or if you have receipts from abroad, you can easily enter them in Gekko.

Invoicing: marking a customer as foreign

Gekko checks whether you have correctly entered the VAT for foreign invoices. If your customer is not marked as foreign in Gekko, the VAT will not be included in the VAT report under the correct category.

To set the customer's country, go to the specific customer (image A) and change the country from ‘Netherlands’ to the country where your customer is located (image B).

Gekko will then advise you on the correct VAT rate when you send an invoice to your customers abroad. Gekko will recommend that you reverse charge VAT (within the EU) or do not charge VAT (outside the EU). Gekko will then automatically include the VAT in the correct sections of the VAT report.

Image A. Customize customer

Image B. Change country of origin