A spare room can pull the lease, the ledger and the VAT return into one conversation.
In ECLI:NL:RBNHO:2025:16030, Rechtspraak.nl, the practical issue is a dispute where records, valuation and business facts had to carry the explanation. For founders, the useful question is whether the records can explain the facts, figures, assumptions and decisions when the story is tested.
The economic route comes first
A founder rents more office space than the company needs today. That is common. Growth is uneven, leases move slowly, and an empty room feels wasteful. So a desk goes to a freelancer, then a small room to another adviser. The landlord keeps sending rent invoices with VAT. The quarterly returns keep moving. Nothing feels dramatic.
Dutch rent VAT often starts with a simple rule. Renting immovable property is normally exempt from VAT. Landlord and tenant can opt for taxed rent if the conditions are met. The Belastingdienst allows two routes: the option can sit in the lease agreement, or the parties can submit a joint request.
The invoice is the last step
That simple structure becomes less simple once the tenant shares the space. The tenant must be a VAT entrepreneur and must use the property for activities that give at least 90 percent right to deduct VAT. For specific sectors, a 70 percent threshold can apply. That lower threshold is narrow. It is not a general escape route.
A dwelling is different. The option for taxed rent is not available for buildings or parts of buildings used as housing. KOR also closes the door. If either landlord or tenant uses the kleineondernemersregeling, taxed rental is not possible.
Legal form is not the whole story
Timing matters too. The option belongs with the signed lease or with the request route. It does not begin because the room later became useful or because the invoice looked clean. For VAT, the form and the use have to line up from the start.
A spare room can change the VAT test
The practical risk is not subletting itself. Many businesses share space well. The risk starts when the downstream use no longer supports the upstream VAT treatment. A main tenant can fall below the required threshold if it sublets rooms VAT-exempt or to users without enough deduction right.
Then the head rent changes character. VAT may still appear on the landlord's invoice, but wrongly charged VAT is not deductible as input VAT. The paper alone does not save the deduction. The business has to look at the lease, the subleases, who sits in which room, the VAT status of each user, and the returns already filed.
The first year deserves special attention. Belastingdienst guidance says that if the use test fails in the first financial year, the right to taxed rental can lapse retroactively from the start of the lease. Later years work differently. If a later failure could not reasonably have been foreseen, the right can remain for that year. Repeat failure can still reach back to the start of that later year.
The ledger will tell its own story
This is where the conversation leaves tax theory and lands at the office table. The founder who treated the spare room as simple cost recovery now has two relationships. One is the head lease with the landlord. The other is the room arrangement with the subtenant. The VAT position of one can disturb the other.
The ledger then becomes more than bookkeeping. It has to match the VAT returns. Rent invoices, sublease invoices, floor use, declarations and correction records must tell the same story. Belastingdienst figures show 1,288,360 VAT-related additional assessments in 2025. That is not drama. It is a sign that VAT mismatches are routine control material.
Follow one revenue stream
Cash is the quiet pressure. A denied deduction does not stay an accounting debate. It can become a payment, interest, adviser time and a harder conversation with the landlord or subtenants. From 1 January 2026, the belastingrente rate for VAT and most taxes other than corporation tax is 5 percent. Time has a price.
A clean review is cheaper than a repair
A business does not need a heroic process here. It needs a clean one. Treat taxed rent as a live lease record, not as a setting in accounting software. At signing, the lease or request route should support the option. During use, the business should know who occupies which rooms, what they do there, whether they use KOR, and whether VAT is charged downstream.
When old VAT returns are wrong, the Belastingdienst correction route covers the current year and the previous five years. Differences of €1,000 or less can usually move through the next return. Larger corrections go through suppletie. For real estate investment goods, use changes during the nine years after first use can also trigger revision of deducted VAT.
A tax control can focus on specific periods or parts of the return and records. Businesses must give access to premises, relevant information and the administration, and they must allow copies to be made. That is why the paper trail matters before anyone asks for it.
Return to the founder with the spare rooms. The sensible question is not whether sharing space was a mistake. Often it is good business. The question is whether the rent contract, room agreements, VAT status, square metres and returns still match after the company changed shape.
That is the calm lesson. Dutch rent VAT does not dislike flexible office life. It dislikes unsupported assumptions. If the rooms change, the tax position may change with them. A founder who sees that early keeps control over cash, the ledger and the conversation with the landlord.
Sources
- Uitspraak ECLI:NL:RBNHO:2025:16030 – Semantius
- Belastingdienst – Option-to-tax conditions (90%/70%) and exclusions
- Belastingdienst – How to opt: contract text or joint request
- Belastingdienst – When the option lapses and what happens next
- Belastingdienst – Temporary vacancy and starting the option
- Belastingdienst – What counts as ‘rental’ vs a taxable service
- Belastingdienst – Always-taxed rentals (short stay, parking, and defined cases)
- Belastingdienst – Input VAT on real estate and 10-year revision
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