The coming portal matters, but the ledger, website and board minutes matter already.
On a Tuesday evening, the treasurer of a small cultural foundation opens three things at once: the bank account, last year’s annual figures and the foundation’s website. The website still names a former board member. The policy plan describes workshops that no longer happen. The bank balance looks healthy, but nobody has written down why part of it is being held back.
The signal has to become readable
This is ordinary Dutch foundation life. It is also where the next phase of ANBI supervision will land first.
An ANBI, an algemeen nut beogende instelling, is not a soft label for a good cause. The Belastingdienst rules are firm. The institution must serve public benefit with nearly all its activities. It may not run public-benefit work with a profit motive. No person, natural or legal, may treat the assets as private property.
The label has a ledger behind it
ANBI status carries tax value. It can matter for gifts, inheritances and donor deductions. That is why the status cannot live only in the statutes or in the founder’s memory. It has to show up in the records, the website and the board minutes.
An ANBI must keep an up-to-date policy plan, a proper administration, a reasonable balance between management costs and spending, and public information on its own website or a shared website. The publication page needs a unique URL that is easy to find.
Larger ANBIs face stricter timing. A fundraising ANBI with total income above €50,000 in the relevant financial year must use the standard publication form. A non-fundraising ANBI with total expenses above €100,000 must do the same. The form must appear within six months after the financial year ends. For a calendar-year ANBI, that means before 1 July.
That date is more than a deadline. It is a quick check on whether the public story and the internal records still match.
The state wants fewer blind spots
Rijksoverheid materials refer to about 45,000 ANBIs in the Netherlands. The same official line points to a simple supervision problem. After registration, the Belastingdienst has had too little structured visibility on what these institutions do, how large they are, and whether they are active or dormant.
What the signal changes
That is the background to the planned ANBI portals. One route concerns supervision and structured communication with the Belastingdienst. Another concerns standardised publication. Official material earlier placed full operation around 2030, but the policy line is already clear: better supervision should not wait until then.
The cabinet response points to better data, a tactical enforcement plan, stronger cooperation with the philanthropic sector and eight trained staff from 2026. It also expects more frequent random checks from that year. The shift is from scattered trust to comparable information.
That does not make small foundations suspect. It does make weak housekeeping easier to see.
Where small boards feel it
For small ANBIs, the pressure is often continuity, not principle. A volunteer treasurer moves house. A secretary stops after eight years. The website was built by a nephew. The old donation agreement sits in an inbox nobody checks anymore.
Large professional charities can turn new reporting into a systems project. Very small volunteer-led ANBIs often feel it as evening work around the kitchen table. The explanatory memorandum to the 2026 tax collection bill already noted that the supervision portal may have greater consequences for very small volunteer-run ANBIs than for large professional ones.
Go back to that Tuesday evening treasurer. The question is not whether the foundation means well. It probably does. The question is whether the bank balance, minutes, policy plan and published information tell the same public-benefit story.
If reserves are being held for a project, the board record should say so. If activities changed, the policy plan should not pretend otherwise. If management costs rose, the figures need context. That is what clean governance looks like in a small file.
Family-linked foundations deserve extra care. The 2025 cabinet response identified a little over 6,000 statutory or factual family foundations among about 45,000 ANBIs. In a reviewed group of 1,252 family-linked ANBIs with combined assets of €4 billion, half had only one or two directors. That is why independence, related-party decisions and control over assets are becoming sharper questions.
Former status can leave a money trail
ANBI attention does not stop when the status ends. A former ANBI whose status ended on or after 1 January 2013, and that had more than €25,000 in ANBI assets at that moment, has an information duty to the Belastingdienst.
The reporting is ledger work, not storytelling. It covers the equity value when the status ended, the development of ANBI assets, spending on ANBI objectives, management costs and donations with recipients. For calendar year 2025, the Belastingdienst wants the data before 1 September 2026.
What founders should check
The valuation point matters as well. ANBI assets are the equity on the date the status ends. Equity includes hidden reserves and must be reported at current market value. For immovable property, the WOZ value may be used. If a former ANBI cannot separate old tax-privileged capital from later capital, the file becomes harder to defend.
That is where ledger discipline protects more than tax position. It protects the public character of the money.
What changes tomorrow morning
A sensible ANBI review does not need a thick memo. It can start with one page: status, statutes, policy plan date, board members, publication URL, financial year, publication deadline and the person responsible for each item.
Then comes the check. Does the website match the minutes? Do the published figures match the accounts? Are restricted donations visible in the ledger? Can the board explain reserves, property, investment balances or large unspent amounts without improvising?
For business owners who donate through a company or personal structure, the recipient, payment, purpose and status check belong with the tax records, not in loose email memory.
None of this turns a small foundation into a corporate machine. That would miss the point. The better discipline is simple, current and transferable. If the treasurer is ill, if the chair resigns, or if the Belastingdienst asks a question, another board member should be able to understand the records without archaeology.
ANBI status is built on public benefit. Public benefit has to be more than a noble sentence in old statutes. It has to be visible in spending, restraint, minutes, publication and asset use.
The treasurer at the kitchen table does not need panic. She needs a clean connection between the work the foundation says it does and the records it keeps. In the coming years, that connection will matter more. Goodwill still matters. It just no longer carries the tax privilege on its own.
Sources
- Taxence
- Rijksoverheid
- Belastingdienst
- Belastingdienst
- Rijksoverheid
- Rijksoverheid
- Belastingdienst
- Belastingdienst
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