What a Dutch bv has to file, and when

A Dutch bv files on four separate tracks. VAT, wage tax, corporate income tax and the annual accounts at the Chamber of Commerce draw on the same bookkeeping and beyond that they share nothing. Each has its own deadline and its own extension rules, and an extension on one does nothing for the others. Treating them as a single year-end exercise is the most common planning error in a Dutch entity that reports to a foreign parent.

Below is the calendar for a financial year that equals the calendar year, with the dates that applied to financial year 2025 during 2026. Read them as a template and shift them by a year.

Filing	Frequency	Deadline for FY2025
VAT return and payment, quarterly filer	4 times a year	30 April, 31 July and 31 October 2026, then 31 January 2027
VAT return and payment, annual filer	once	31 March 2026
EU sales listing (opgaaf ICP)	monthly, quarterly or annually	within 2 months of the end of the period
Wage tax return (aangifte loonheffingen) and payment	monthly or every 4 weeks	as stated in your aangiftebrief, in practice the last day of the following month
Corporate income tax return (vennootschapsbelasting)	once	1 June 2026, or 1 November 2026 with an extension requested before 1 June
Annual accounts prepared and sent to shareholders	once	31 May 2026
Annual accounts filed with the Chamber of Commerce (KVK)	once	8 November or 31 December 2026, see below

VAT, and the return nobody remembers

Most Dutch companies file quarterly. The return and the payment share one deadline, so the money leaves your account on the same date the return goes in. A nil return still has to be filed.

If your bv supplies goods or services to VAT-registered customers in other EU member states, there is a second return, the opgaaf ICP, which lists those supplies per customer VAT number and is due within two months of the end of the period. Quarterly reporting of goods is only allowed up to €50,000 of goods per quarter. This is the filing that gets missed, because it produces no payment and therefore no entry in a treasury calendar.

Wage tax, where the deadline is on a letter and not on a website

Once your bv has staff, the Belastingdienst sends an aangiftebrief for the coming calendar year stating, per period, the final filing date and the final payment date. Those are the dates that count. The period is a month or four weeks, and four-week periods do not line up with month ends at all. Filing and paying are separate obligations with the same deadline, and paying late does not repair itself in the next period.

Corporate income tax, and the extension you cannot get on your own

The corporate income tax return for a financial year that equals the calendar year is due by 1 June of the following year. You can request an extension to 1 November, and that request has to be in before 1 June. In 2026 the rates are 19% on taxable profit up to €200,000 and 25.8% above that.

A third route only works through a Dutch tax agent. A firm with a becon number can apply, before 1 May, for collective extension for its clients, running to 30 April of the year after that, provided it keeps to a delivery schedule agreed with the Belastingdienst. A company cannot obtain that extension itself, and it sits with the agent's becon number rather than with the company, so it does not travel with you if you change advisers mid-year.

Interest is the reason not to take the full extension by default. Tax interest runs from the day after the financial year ended, at 5% from 1 January 2026, so a realistic preliminary return filed early is usually cheaper than an exact one filed late. From 2026 a preliminary assessment can only be requested or amended digitally, through Mijn Belastingdienst Zakelijk or through your adviser.

The annual accounts, and the two dates that catch people out

Four steps run in sequence. The board prepares the accounts and sends them to the shareholders within five months of the year end. The shareholders may grant an extension of up to five months on the grounds of special circumstances, and that decision has to be taken inside the original five months. They then have two months to adopt the accounts, and once adopted the accounts are filed with the KVK within eight days, and never later than twelve months after the year end.

The first catch is that the twelve months cannot be extended in any way. Whatever your parent's reporting calendar looks like, 31 December is the outer limit for a calendar financial year.

The second catch works the other way round. If all shareholders are also directors, signing the accounts counts as adopting them, so the two-month adoption period falls away. That sounds like a simplification and it moves your deadline forward, to ten months and eight days after the year end, which for a calendar year means 8 November. A wholly owned Dutch bv whose only shareholder also sits on the board is in exactly that position, and aiming at 31 December there puts you seven weeks late.

How much becomes public depends on the size class, measured over two consecutive financial years against three criteria of which at least two must be met. In 2026 micro sits at a balance sheet total of €450,000, net turnover of €900,000 and fewer than ten employees, and small at €7.5 million, €15 million and fewer than fifty employees. A micro or small bv files an abbreviated balance sheet with notes and keeps its profit and loss account out of the public file. Filing is digital, in XBRL.

The exemption that removes this track altogether

If the parent consolidates the Dutch subsidiary, article 2:403 of the Dutch Civil Code allows the subsidiary to depart from the normal annual accounts requirements. The conditions are strict, so read them before assuming the exemption applies to you.

The parent declares in writing that it is jointly and severally liable for the debts arising from the subsidiary's legal acts, which is the document usually called a 403 declaration. The shareholders consent in writing to the departure, and that consent has to be given after the start of the financial year and before the accounts for that year are adopted, which makes it an annual act rather than a one-off. The consolidated accounts have to include the subsidiary's figures and be drawn up or translated into Dutch, French, German or English, with the accountant's report and the management report in the same language. All of it goes to the trade register, and the consolidated documents have to be filed within six months of the balance sheet date, or within a month of a permitted later publication.

The liability declaration runs until it is formally withdrawn, so it is not signed once and forgotten, and six months is considerably earlier than the twelve months that would otherwise apply. The exemption buys simplicity and costs time.

What sits outside the calendar

The ultimate beneficial owners of your bv have to be registered with the KVK, and that registration has to be updated when the ownership or the structure changes. The register is not public, though authorities and recognised institutions with duties under the Dutch anti-money-laundering act have access. Records have to be kept for seven years, and records on immovable property for ten.

Late filing of the annual accounts is an economic offence, and the heavier consequence sits behind the fine. If the bv ever becomes insolvent, late filing counts as improper performance of duties by the board, and the law then assumes that this was an important cause of the insolvency. The board has to rebut that assumption itself, which is harder than it sounds.

We keep the Dutch bookkeeping, file the VAT and wage tax returns, prepare the annual accounts under Standard 4410, file the corporate income tax return and do the KVK filing, and we say in advance what we need and by when. What the first three months look like is on the page for a Dutch subsidiary. Two things sit next to this calendar, namely what has to be arranged before the first employee begins and what to do when a VAT return turns out to be wrong.