Netherlands Opportunities
The Netherlands offers opportunities for you to work as a self-employed person, either as a freelancer, as an independent consultant, an entrepreneur with employees, or just as a one-man business. So if you have a dream of working in the Netherlands as a self-employed person, stay tuned as we discuss five steps to becoming self-employed in the Netherlands.
STEPS TO BECOMING SELF-EMPLOYED IN THE NETHERLANDS
1. Define your business idea
- What is it you want to do?
- What are you passionate about?
- What service or product are you seeking to provide to the market?
And you need to identify this first and foremost because that will drive the success of your business. Is this something you are skilled in, something you have knowledge about or something you are passionate about? Whatever it is, you have to define what kind of business, and what kind of service you want to offer in the Netherlands.
2. Research and Document Your Plan on Paper
A bit of business planning will help the success of your business. It doesn’t have to be a robust business plan, but identifying who your target audience is, and what the competition currently is in the market.
- Are there gaps in the market that you will likely be able to fill?
- What will be your unique selling proposition?
- At what price will you be entering the market?
- You also want to identify the cost that you need to start up.
- What will be your startup cost? What do you require?
- What kind of investment do you need to do in order to start up your business?
- Do you need some financing?
- Is it gonna be from savings, from borrowing from friends, or would you be approaching the bank for funds?
All of this you need to pencil down in a small business plan to at least give you an idea of where you are and where you want to go. Step number three is to register your business with the Chamber of Commerce. In the Netherlands, the Chamber of Commerce is popularly known as Kaka, and its located in every city.
So if you search online at Kaka Nell, you’ll search for the location closest to where you live. You have to book an appointment and visit the kaka to register your business. You already have a business name that you have researched that name to know if is available and you take it for registration. And of course, it costs some money to register at the Kaka. As of this moment, it is less than 80 euros, I believe, to register your business at the Kaka. Once you register at the Kaka, you’ll receive a letter of registration where your Kaka number is mentioned, and the tax office will also send you a letter informing you of your VAT registration number and notify you of your tax obligations. Step number four is to open a business account.
3. Open a Business Bank Account
Now that you have a business name at Kaka number, it is time for you to open a business bank account. I recommend that this is done right from the beginning of your business because it helps to put all the financial records about your business under one roof. You don’t want to be mixing personal things with business. In the future, you would have a bookkeeper, or in the future, the tax office might request to go through your books. You don’t want to have to give them your personal bank account where all your confidential things for personal purposes are. So you want to keep a separate bank account for the purpose of your business.
Even if you are supporting your business from private savings, what you do is transfer some money from your private account into the business account and then make all expenses for the purpose of the business through the business bank account. If you also need a credit card, get one for the business. This way, it is very easy to do bookkeeping for your business and also for tax audits. It makes things easy, and that way you also don’t miss out on all your expenses, but when you mix them up with private dealings, it becomes difficult to separate what is personal and what is business.
4. Annual Income Tax Returns
As a business owner in the Netherlands, you have tax obligations. Usually, you are required to make value-added tax returns as well as annual income tax returns. Value-added tax usually happens every quarter, and annual income tax will happen at the end of the year, your bookkeeping is the source for making the tax filing process seamless. That is why I recommend that you subscribe to bookkeeping applications from the beginning. This will help you keep an overview of your business activities right from the start, and we make that filing easy.
And they are so good that you can file your tax returns from this bookkeeping software, and some of them do offer promotions for new businesses. You can take advantage of that. I recommend ebook housing a lot because they offer 15 months of free subscriptions for new businesses. I’ll leave a link in the description. If you want to check them out, you register and you don’t need to pay. If you are new in business as a self-employed for 15 months, you don’t need to pay, but you get to enjoy all the benefits of using accounting software in your business. So with these five steps, you are on your way to starting a successful self-employed business in the Netherlands.
Of course, business requires effort, requires commitment, it requires perseverance, and it requires consistency. You have to learn things, you have to do your marketing, you have to do networking, and all kinds of things that are associated with running a business.
In Conclusion
Whatever the case, the Netherlands, it’s very supportive of entrepreneurs. So you stand a very high chance of succeeding in business if you give it your best shot. If you have not already subscribed to my channel, I invite you to do so. Now, please consider subscribing and turning on the notification bell so that you’ll be notified when next I post another video. In the next video I’ll be posting, I’ll be talking about taxis for self-employed persons in the Netherlands. So you want to be notified when that video is out. Click the screen now and watch the next video and I’ll see you there.