WBSO Compliance: What You Need to Know About Dutch R&D Tax Credits

The WBSO (Wet Bevordering Speur- en Ontwikkelingswerk) is the Netherlands' primary R&D tax credit scheme, offering significant reductions in wage tax and social security contributions for companies engaged in qualifying research and development activities.

Who Qualifies

Any company registered in the Netherlands that performs technical research or develops technically new products, processes, or software can apply. The activities must involve a technical challenge -- routine development or implementation does not qualify. The R&D must aim to create something technically new or to resolve a technical uncertainty.

Documentation Requirements

The RVO (Netherlands Enterprise Agency) requires detailed administration of your R&D activities. This includes: a project description outlining the technical challenge, a log of hours spent per employee per project, descriptions of the work performed, and periodic progress reports. The administration must be maintained throughout the year, not reconstructed after the fact.

Common Pitfalls

The most frequent mistakes companies make are: insufficiently detailed hour descriptions, mixing qualifying and non-qualifying activities within the same time entries, failing to maintain records during the year and trying to reconstruct them later, and not having a clear approval process that demonstrates management oversight.

How Structured Time Tracking Helps

A purpose-built time tracking system addresses each of these pitfalls. Required description fields with quality indicators ensure entries are detailed enough. Project-based tracking keeps qualifying activities separated. Real-time logging eliminates the need for reconstruction. And approval workflows demonstrate the management oversight that RVO expects.

Audit Preparation

When an RVO audit occurs, you need to produce your administration quickly and completely. Having all data in a single structured system means you can generate the required reports, export hour logs, and demonstrate your approval workflows within minutes rather than days.