Deductions freelancers often forget: the checklist

Small recurring costs

Bank fees on your business account, transaction fees from your payment provider, your accounting software, cloud storage, your domain name and hosting: all small amounts that recur monthly and are fully deductible. Enter them once as recurring items in your records and you will never miss them again. For foreign services, make sure you keep the actual invoices, not just the debit on your account.

Also often forgotten: professional association fees, trade literature and subscriptions to journals or knowledge platforms. As long as they demonstrably relate to your business, they are deductible.

Kilometres you do not record do not exist

The trip to a client usually makes it into the records. But the kilometres to a networking event, a supplier, the hardware store, a course or an introductory meeting that led nowhere? Those are business kilometres too, at 0.25 euros per kilometre in 2026. With two forgotten trips a week, that quickly adds up to hundreds of euros over a year. Record every business trip immediately, or use an app that tracks it for you.

If you travel by public transport or bicycle for work, public transport costs are fully deductible and you may also record costs for the bicycle. Parking fees during business appointments count as well.

Business meals, conferences and entertainment

Costs for business lunches and dinners, conferences, seminars and study trips are partially deductible: you may deduct 80% of these costs from your profit. The VAT on food and drinks in hospitality is not deductible, but the costs themselves largely are. Many freelancers do not record these items at all because they find the rules complicated, and thereby forfeit deductions. Keep the receipt, note who you met and why, and record the expense.

Courses, training and coaching

Training that maintains or deepens the knowledge and skills for your current business is deductible as a business expense. Think of a professional course, a certification, a masterclass or business coaching. The travel costs to get there and any study materials count too. Training for an entirely different profession falls outside this, but the boundary is wider than many entrepreneurs think.

Mixed costs: the business share counts

If you use something both privately and for business, you may deduct the business share. Your phone plan, your home internet connection, sometimes even your energy costs if you run a lot of equipment: make a reasonable estimate of business use and record how you arrived at it. You also deduct the VAT on these costs proportionally. A substantiated split of, say, 70% business is fine; a number plucked from thin air is not.

Finally, the biggest forgotten item of all: costs you paid privately. A business purchase with your private account or card is simply deductible, provided you keep the receipt and process the expense in your records as a private contribution. At the end of each quarter, scan your private statements for business expenses; it almost always turns something up.