Barter Deal

If you are in the start-up phase of your company, it may well be that your budget is not yet completely matched with the expenses you need. As an independent entrepreneur you naturally understand that you cannot just ask for everything for free (including the photographers, web designers and yes .. even tax advisers must be able to pay their rent and food), but with a little creative thinking it is often possible to make a barter deal with other starters. Now there is a big misunderstanding about accepting services / products for which you pay with your services / products instead of with money; this should indeed appear in your administration! Your administration (and in the eye of the Tax Authorities) is not only limited to money transactions, payments in kind – such as with barter transactions – are indeed included. The easiest way is to both issue an invoice for your service / product with the price that you normally charge (possibly with a discount that does not differ too much from other promotions), and send this to each other after you receive the counter invoice ( costs) against your sales invoice as payment. What to look out for: If none of you want to incur costs, the invoice amounts for both the purchase and sales invoice must be the same; You do indeed just charge VAT on your invoice and pay it (the VAT on the purchase invoice is deductible); The mutual services are only deductible for business (VAT and income tax) if they are actually for business use. If you, as a photographer, conclude a deal with a web designer, it is easy to prove that both services are for business use. If you exchange a massage for tax advice, the massage is not deductible as business expenses for the tax adviser. – it is not a business service.