Photography, stock images and licences: expense or investment, and which records do you keep?

Whether a photo, a stock image or a licence is an expense or an investment depends on how long you use it. A stock photo for one campaign or a monthly subscription to an image library is booked as an expense. Rights that you use for several years go on the balance sheet and are depreciated.

For an agency there is more to it. You often pass images on to the client, you hand licences on, and later you must be able to prove that you were allowed to use an image. You sometimes keep that proof longer than the seven years the tax authority requires.

In this article

1. Is a photo or a licence an expense or an investment?
2. How do you depreciate a purchased licence or a photo shoot?
3. Do you get an investment allowance on image rights?
4. Do you recharge photos and stock images to the client with or without VAT?
5. May you pass a stock licence on to your client?
6. What does a photo without a licence cost?
7. Which records do you keep, and for how long?

Is a photo or a licence an expense or an investment?

That depends on how long you use it. If you use the image within a year, for one project or one campaign, you book it as an expense. If you use rights to images in your business for several years, it is a business asset and you depreciate it.

For tax purposes you determine profit according to sound business practice (goed koopmansgebruik), meaning the standards that are usual in business (Income Tax Act 2001, article 3.25). Under the law a business asset is an item you use to run your business. You spread its cost over the years in which you use it (Income Tax Act 2001, article 3.30).

In the annual accounts of a private company (bv) such rights are called intangible fixed assets. These are assets without physical form that you use for more than a year. The law expressly includes the costs of acquiring intellectual property rights (Dutch Civil Code Book 2, article 365). A purchased copyright in a photo series or a multi-year exclusive licence falls under this.

Most of an agency's spending on images is simply an expense. Think of a stock photo in an advert for a client, a photographer for a product shoot that you recharge, or a monthly subscription to an image library. Investments are mainly rights that you use yourself for years, such as images for your own brand identity or a photo library you build up to sell again.

How do you depreciate a purchased licence or a photo shoot?

You spread the purchase price over the years in which you use the image. For tax purposes you may depreciate at most 20% of the purchase price per year, so over at least five years. For goodwill it is at most 10% (Income Tax Act 2001, article 3.30(2)).

If a business asset costs less than € 450, you deduct the costs at once and do not need to depreciate (Ondernemersplein, depreciation). So a single licence of a few hundred euros never needs to go on the balance sheet, even if you use it for longer.

If your agency creates images itself for its own use, such as a photo series for your own website, a favourable rule applies. The law lets you write off the costs of intangible assets that you create yourself in full in the year of creation (Income Tax Act 2001, article 3.30(3)). If you buy the rights from someone else, the normal depreciation applies.

These rules also apply to a bv, because corporate income tax follows the same articles for profit (Corporate Income Tax Act 1969, article 8). In the bv's annual accounts you depreciate using a method that fits the expected useful life (Dutch Civil Code Book 2, article 386(4)).

An example. You buy the copyright in a photo series for your own brand identity for € 6,000 and expect to use it for five years. Then you depreciate € 1,200 a year. You depreciate a camera for your own studio the same way, and Ondernemersplein itself uses the example of a camera that lasts five years.

Do you get an investment allowance on image rights?

Possibly, if the rights are a business asset. For the investment allowance the law excludes goodwill, as well as licences and concessions granted by the government. The law does not list other intangible business assets as an exception (Income Tax Act 2001, article 3.45).

The small-scale investment allowance (KIA) is an extra deduction from profit when you invest. In 2026 the KIA is 28% for a total investment of € 2,901 up to and including € 71,683 (Belastingdienst, KIA 2026). A business asset of less than € 450 does not count (Income Tax Act 2001, article 3.45(2)). More on the amounts is in our article on the KIA 2026.

If you book a licence as an expense, there is no investment and therefore no KIA. The Belastingdienst does not list licences or software among the excluded business assets (Belastingdienst, no right to investment allowance). Whether a particular right is a business asset therefore depends on whether you use it in your business for several years.

Do you recharge photos and stock images to the client with or without VAT?

Usually with VAT. If you buy a photo, a photographer or a licence in your own name, the price is part of your own service to the client. It is your turnover and you charge VAT on it, even if you show it as a separate line on the invoice.

Only a disbursement (doorlopende post) is without VAT. These are costs that you pay in the name and for the account of your client. The Belastingdienst gives the example of fees for permits or land registry charges (Belastingdienst, on what you do not charge VAT). For images this means: the client is the buyer and the licence is in the client's name.

If you buy from an image library outside the EU, you usually receive an invoice without VAT. The foreign supplier reverses the charge to you. You declare that VAT yourself and deduct it again as input tax if you are entitled to deduct (Ondernemersplein, importing services from a country outside the EU).

May you pass a stock licence on to your client?

That is set out in the image library's licence terms, not in the law. A licence is permission from the rights holder for a particular use (Copyright Act, article 2(2)). What the client may do can never be more than what your licence allows.

An example of such terms. Adobe Stock lets you buy a licence on behalf of your client, provided that you bind the client to the same terms. The rights then belong to you or to the client, not to both. If you also use the image for yourself or for another client, you buy an extra licence. Reselling licences is not allowed (Adobe, Stock Additional Terms, version 15 September 2023, article 6(D)).

Watch out too for images made with AI. Legal research on European copyright law argues that a work is only protected if it contains creative choices made by a human (Hugenholtz & Quintais, 2021). If an AI image is not protected, a competitor can use the same image, even though you paid for the licence.

What does a photo without a licence cost?

The rights holder can claim damages, often the licence fee you should have paid, plus costs. The law gives the creator that right, even after transferring the copyright (Copyright Act, article 27).

An example from case law. A foundation put two press photos on its website without permission and without the photographer's name. The subdistrict court used € 198.75 per photo in lost licence fees, € 397.50 in total. On top of that came € 318 in costs for tracing and collection, and € 1,147 in legal costs (District Court of The Hague, 13 February 2019, ECLI:NL:RBDHA:2019:1044).

In the same case the court refused a 50% surcharge as a penalty. Dutch law has no damages as punishment, the subdistrict judge wrote (ECLI:NL:RBDHA:2019:1044). So anyone who cannot show a licence pays the missed fee and the costs, and per photo that is soon more than the licence would have cost.

Which records do you keep, and for how long?

For tax purposes you keep your records for seven years (General Tax Act, article 52(4)). For images that is often too short. You want to be able to prove that you were allowed to use a photo for as long as it is online, and for some time after that.

Copyright runs until 70 years after the creator's death (Copyright Act, article 37). A claim for damages becomes time-barred five years after the rights holder knows of the damage and the person responsible, and at the latest twenty years after the infringement (Dutch Civil Code Book 3, article 310). So a photo from ten years ago can still lead to a letter.

Keep these documents for each image, preferably in one folder per project or per client:

• the invoice or proof of purchase, with the date and the image number at the image library
• the proof of licence with the type of licence, and a copy of the terms that applied on the day of purchase
• for a photographer or illustrator: the assignment and the written agreement on the rights
• when passing it on to the client: the agreement in which the client accepts the licence terms
• where and for how long the image was used, so that you can check a claim against the licence

Sources

• Income Tax Act 2001 (Wet inkomstenbelasting 2001), articles 3.25, 3.30 and 3.45, text in force from 1 January 2026, accessed 31 October 2026. wetten.overheid.nl
• Dutch Civil Code Book 2, articles 365 and 386, accessed 31 October 2026. wetten.overheid.nl
• Corporate Income Tax Act 1969 (Wet op de vennootschapsbelasting 1969), article 8, accessed 31 October 2026. wetten.overheid.nl
• Ondernemersplein (KVK and Belastingdienst), Depreciation (in Dutch), accessed 31 October 2026. ondernemersplein.overheid.nl
• Belastingdienst, Small-scale investment allowance 2026 (in Dutch), accessed 31 October 2026. belastingdienst.nl
• Belastingdienst, No right to investment allowance (in Dutch), accessed 31 October 2026. belastingdienst.nl
• Belastingdienst, On what do you not charge VAT? (in Dutch), accessed 31 October 2026. belastingdienst.nl
• Ondernemersplein, Importing services from a country outside the EU (in Dutch), accessed 31 October 2026. ondernemersplein.overheid.nl
• Copyright Act (Auteurswet), articles 2, 27 and 37, text in force from 1 January 2026, accessed 31 October 2026. wetten.overheid.nl
• General Tax Act (Algemene wet inzake rijksbelastingen), article 52, accessed 31 October 2026. wetten.overheid.nl
• Dutch Civil Code Book 3, article 310, accessed 31 October 2026. wetten.overheid.nl
• District Court of The Hague (subdistrict court, Leiden), 13 February 2019, ECLI:NL:RBDHA:2019:1044. uitspraken.rechtspraak.nl
• Adobe, Stock Additional Terms, version 15 September 2023, article 6(D). adobe.com
• Hugenholtz, P.B. & Quintais, J.P. (2021). Copyright and artificial creation: does EU copyright law protect AI-assisted output? IIC International Review of Intellectual Property and Competition Law, 52(9), 1190-1216. doi.org