Five deductions every European freelancer forgets (and the receipts to keep)

We see thousands of expense ledgers a year. The same five categories keep showing up under-claimed. None of them are exotic, none require a creative accountant — they're the boring line items that quietly turn into a four-figure refund at year-end. Here's the list.

1. Subscriptions to professional tools

Anything you pay monthly to do your job: SaaS dashboards, billing platforms (yes, including eurobillr), design tools, IDEs, cloud storage, code-signing, domain renewals. 100% deductible in BE, NL, DE and FR if you can show the tool is used for the business.

Receipt to keep: the monthly invoice from the vendor with your VAT number on it. Most platforms put the VAT number on the invoice when you add it to your billing settings — do that once and forget about it.

2. Home-office utility share

If you work from home, a pro-rata share of rent, electricity, gas, internet and water is deductible. The maths is the same everywhere: divide the business-use surface (your office) by the total surface, multiply each bill by that fraction.

| Country | Practical rule | |---|---| | Belgium | Pro-rata, no fixed cap. The tax office accepts surface-based or hour-based splits. | | Netherlands | Either pro-rata, or a flat €5/day "thuiswerkvergoeding" if you're employed alongside. | | Germany | Pauschale of €6/day up to €1,260/year (Homeoffice-Pauschale) — no surface check. | | France | Pro-rata under régime réel (BNC). Micro-BNC has no deduction at all. |

Receipt to keep: one annual photo of your meter readings + the utility contracts. Yearly screenshots beat scrambling at audit time.

3. Training & books in your domain

Conference tickets, online courses, technical books, certifications — all fully deductible everywhere on the continent, provided the topic is linked to your billable activity. A frontend dev expensing a marketing course is fine; a frontend dev expensing a yoga retreat is not.

Receipt to keep: invoice + a one-line note ("attended for X contract") in your bookkeeping. The note matters more than people think in a tax audit.

4. Phone & data plan — the business share

Almost nobody splits this correctly. The honest rule: estimate the percentage of business use (50–80% is typical for freelancers), apply it to the monthly invoice, deduct that share. Don't deduct 100% — that's the fastest way to attract a desk audit.

Business share %  = professional minutes / total minutes
Deductible amount = monthly invoice × business share

If your phone is a dedicated work line, then yes, deduct 100% — but you'll need a second contract or a documented number, not a "I sometimes use it for work" claim.

5. Bank fees on a professional account

Account-keeping fees, card fees, FX conversion fees, payment-processor fees (Stripe, Mollie, PayPal): all deductible. Most freelancers forget the FX fees in particular — for anyone billing in USD or GBP from a EUR account, those add up to a few hundred euro a year.

Receipt to keep: the bank's annual fee statement, plus your Stripe / Mollie monthly fee report. Both are downloadable from the dashboard.

Action items for this quarter

1. Open your last 12 monthly bank statements and tag every recurring SaaS

payment as a professional expense.

1. Take a single photo of your meter readings today; you'll thank yourself

in March.

1. Calculate the business share of your phone bill once and reuse the

percentage every month.

1. Download the year-to-date fee report from Stripe / Mollie / PayPal and

add it to your expenses.

1. Stop trusting your memory — a tool like eurobillr captures these

invoices via PEPPOL or OCR, so the deductibles end up in your ledger automatically.

General information for European freelancers, not legal or tax advice. Specific rates, thresholds and rules differ per country and change every year — check our country-specific guides (Belgium, Netherlands, Germany, France) or run your real numbers through the free tax calculator.