Filing an annual Aangifte does not always mean a refund

If you did not receive a letter from the Belastingdienst requiring you to declare the past year, if there is no underpayment, and all your income was official with your employer withholding the taxes, and you have no complex assets or income abroad — then not filing a return is normal practice.

It is worth filing voluntarily when there is a chance of a refund or when you need to correct something. When you have no such entitlement and no expenses that can be deducted, you can, in principle, do without filing.

But we still recommend that you pay attention to your financial and fiscal reporting and make sure that all circumstances have been taken into account and that the calculations are done correctly.

The Belastingdienst automatically pulls in a lot of data, but it is not always accurate, so checking that the pre-filled data is correct is very important. Income from employment or freelance work, bank accounts, mortgages, insurance contributions, and assets abroad are all taken into account.

Are all accounts included, are there no old or closed accounts in the return, are the mortgage interest figures stated correctly, have the Box 3 thresholds not been exceeded, has anything been missed.

And it is worth remembering that the result of filing is not always a refund — sometimes you have to pay extra, but even that is not always a bad thing.

It is better to detect a small underpayment in good time and pay it right away, in order to avoid penalties and interest in the future.

It is smarter to stay in control of the situation rather than wait until the tax authority assesses something extra itself.