WBSO Statement

What to report

Self-employed without employees

If you are an R&D tax payer (self-employed entrepreneur), you must only submit a WBSO statement if you have spent fewer than 500 hours on R&D in 2023.

Company with employees

If you received an R&D declaration as an R&D tax withholding agent (employer) for your employees in 2023, you must report the R&D hours your employees spent in 2023. 

Did your employees spend no hours on R&D? And did your company not deduct the R&D withholding tax credit? Then you must also submit a statement. 

If you opted for ’actual costs and expenditures’ (rather than a fixed amount), you must also report the costs and expenditures incurred in 2023. 

Business closure or bankruptcy

If you terminate your business because it has closed or you business has gone bankrupt, you must report the actual number of hours spent on allocated projects, plus any costs and expenditures. You need to do this within 1 month after terminating your business. To do this, please send us an e-mail via wbso@rvo.nl. We will then set up the required task (‘Indienen mededeling’) for you in the portal.

When and how to report

Please submit your statement via our portal. To submit you click on the button ‘WBSO Aanvragen en beheren’ and log in. In the portal you will find a task called ‘Indienen mededeling’ (submit statement). As soon as this task is available in the portal, you will receive an e-mail notification.

You submit 1 statement for all the R&D declarations you received, ultimately on 31 March in the year after you received the R&D declaration(s).

Focus points for calculating hours, costs and expenditures

Since 2022 the submission of WBSO applications has been simplified. Each R&D declaration always relates to a period that runs until the end of the calendar year.

When stating hours, costs and expenditures, please keep the following in mind:

• Please note that we use the term R&D, which is the translation of the Dutch term ‘speur- en ontwikkelingswerk’ (S&O), as if R&D and S&O have the same meaning. However, not all R&D-projects activities, companies, costs and expenditures are eligible for the WBSO. In the Manual WBSO 2024 (see below) you can find the preconditions and assessment criteria. 
• Any R&D hours (plus costs and expenditures) that you spent (or incurred) before the start of the period covered by your R&D declaration, do not qualify for WBSO.
• You may only state the costs and expenditures that: 
  • you included in the application; and
  • we allocated in the R&D declaration. 

This applies per project, not per application.

• You can only specify costs that exclusively serve the execution of - and are directly attributable to - the R&D project. This means that:
  • you incur costs solely (100%) for the R&D project;
  • there is a clear relationship between the costs specified and the R&D activities carried out.
• The actual costs and expenditures you state, must be paid at the moment you submit your statement.
• In addition, the costs are incurred when you use them for your R&D work. This means you cannot include costs in the statement for purchased materials that you have paid for, but have not yet used for R&D activities.
• If you partially include expenditures under the WBSO, you must show in your R&D administrative records how you came to your calculations.

Statement submission tools

There are a number of handy tools that you can use to submit the information required. When you prepare your statement, please use:

• the WBSO Rekentool 2023 (Dutch) - a calculation tool to quickly and easily calculate your total actual hours and possible costs and expenditures - if you have received 2 or more R&D statements in 2023;
• the WBSO Handleiding Mededeling met stappenplan 2023 (Dutch) – a statement submission manual that contains frequently asked questions and an example (see below);
• the Manual WBSO 2024 - chapter 11 explains how you can report (see below).

After the submission of your statement

You can find the confirmation of the submission of your statement in the portal. 

We will issue a revised R&D declaration when the actual number of R&D hours worked and/or any actual costs and expenditures are less than we allocated in the initial R&D declaration. 

Please note that submitting a statement is mandatory, even if your company did not carry out any R&D work and did not deduct the R&D withholding tax credit. If - after a reminder - you still have not submitted a statement, the number of R&D hours worked will be set at 0. This will result in the full correction of your R&D declaration and the imposition of a fine. 

We will also give a fine if you submit an incorrect statement.