The KOR: should Dutch expat freelancers opt in?
Under a revenue threshold, you can opt out of btw altogether, but the trade-off isn't free.
If your yearly revenue stays under a fairly low threshold, the lets you stop charging btw altogether. No btw on your invoices, no quarterly return to file for it, one less deadline on the calendar.
The trade-off is the part people miss: opting in also means you can no longer reclaim on your own costs. Every euro of btw you pay on equipment, software, or a coworking desk simply stays paid: there's no rubriek 5b to claim it back on anymore.
Service businesses with low costs and mostly private clients (a coach, a tutor, a designer selling to individuals rather than VAT-registered companies) tend to gain the most: their clients never noticed the btw anyway, so removing it is a straightforward win.
The trade-off in one number
Take a concrete year: revenue of €15.000, and business costs light enough that voorbelasting would only have been worth around €300. Under the KOR, that €300 stays with the Belastingdienst instead of coming back, but if your clients are private individuals who never saw a VAT invoice as leverage, the simplicity usually outweighs it. Flip the costs (a studio full of equipment) and the calculus flips too.
The catch: you're committing
Opting in isn't a switch you flip back on a bad month. Once registered, you're expected to stay in for a minimum stretch before you can opt back into normal btw filing, so it's worth projecting revenue for the year ahead, not just looking at last quarter, before requesting it in Mijn Belastingdienst Zakelijk.
Read the glossary entries for KOR, voorbelasting, and btw before you decide in Mijn Belastingdienst Zakelijk.
Weighing the KOR trade-off against your own costs and clients is easier with the actual numbers in front of you. Kwartaal guides you through this automatically.