Booking web shop returns and refunds: revenue, VAT and stock

The right of withdrawal in brief

A consumer who buys online or at a distance may cancel the purchase within 14 days of receiving the product, without a reason. After that they have another 14 days to send the product back. You refund the purchase price within 14 days of the notice, including the original standard delivery costs. You may wait with the refund until you have received the product or seen proof of dispatch. You may charge the return shipping costs to the customer, provided you stated that clearly in advance.

If you do not inform the customer properly about the right of withdrawal, the cooling-off period is extended by up to twelve months. So set out the rules clearly on your website and in your terms and conditions. Since 25 June 2026 you must also offer a clear withdrawal button online, so a customer can cancel a purchase as easily as making one. There are exceptions, such as custom-made items, perishable products and sealed hygiene products whose seal has been broken. The right of withdrawal only applies to consumers; with business customers you make your own return arrangements.

Booking a return: credit note and VAT

You do not book a refund as a cost but as a correction to your revenue. The proper way is a credit note: an invoice with negative amounts, its own number and a reference to the original order. Most web shop systems create one automatically once you process a return. What a credit note looks like and which number it gets is covered in drawing up a credit invoice and invoice numbers.

You correct the VAT in the return period in which you issue the credit note or refund the money, not in the period of the original sale. So you do not need to amend an earlier return. If you also refund delivery costs, you reverse the VAT on those too; delivery costs follow the VAT rate of the product you shipped. Your payment provider's fees are usually not refunded on a return; they remain ordinary costs.

Sales to other EU countries: the OSS

If you sell above the threshold of € 10,000 a year to consumers in other EU countries, you charge the VAT of your customer's country and declare it through the One Stop Shop. A return on such a sale is then also corrected through the OSS, not in your ordinary Dutch return. You do that in a later OSS return, stating which country and which quarter the correction relates to.

If you stay below the threshold and charged Dutch VAT, you simply correct the return in your Dutch VAT return. Track your sales per country, so that for every return you know which route the original VAT took. The basics of VAT on cross-border online sales are in bookkeeping for web shops.

Stock, damaged returns and the year-end

If a product comes back undamaged, put it back in stock at the original purchase price and reverse the cost of sales. If it is damaged or can no longer be sold as new, write it down to what it will still fetch, or write it off if it is worthless. Record that with a photo or short note, because in an audit the tax authorities want to see why your stock is lower than your purchases suggest. How to value stock is covered in valuing stock.

Pay extra attention around the turn of the year. Sales from late December that come back in January belong to the old year's revenue, while the credit note falls in the new year. If you sell a lot around the holidays, discuss with your bookkeeper how to deal with that at the year-end. And in your stock count on 31 December, include returns that have arrived but have not been processed yet.

Frequently asked questions