Fashion and footwear. A strong collection, strong figures.

Yes. Normally stock is on the balance sheet at cost price, but for clothing and shoes that are hard to sell it may be lower. If your own records give a good picture of what is hard to sell, that outcome applies. Otherwise you use the fixed maximum percentages of the Tax Administration, based on how long an item has been in stock. For women's outerwear, for example, that is 50% after 6 to 9 months and 80% after 18 months. You then need to know the purchase price and delivery date of each item, and you apply it to the whole product group.

Offering tax free is not compulsory. If you do, you register the purchase digitally with Dutch Customs or with your intermediary. That has been compulsory since 1 January 2026. The customer lives outside the EU, buys in the shop for at least €50 including VAT, takes the goods in their own luggage and leaves the EU within 3 months after the month of purchase. Orders through your online shop do not count.

That depends on the card. Is your own card valid only in your shop in the Netherlands and only for clothing and shoes at 21%? Then you pay the VAT when you sell the card. Can the customer also buy something at 9% with it, or does a customer hand in a town gift card or national gift card at your shop? Then you only pay the VAT when the card is redeemed.

Usually the Retail Non-Food cao, which runs from 1 January 2026 up to and including 31 December 2027. If most of your sales come from shoes, the Sport and shoes wage table applies. Otherwise the Fashion wage table applies. A 21-year-old sales assistant in group A gets €14.99 an hour from 1 July 2026. Whether the cao also applies if you are not a member of an employers' association depends on it being declared generally binding. That has been requested, the decision is still to come. You will find the wage table, employment contract and letters at the Retail Non-Food cao for employers. What a sales assistant costs you is shown on what an employee costs under the Retail Non-Food cao.

As a rule, yes. Clothing and shoe shops fall under the compulsory scheme of Pensioenfonds Detailhandel, the retail pension fund. The premium in 2026 is 24.75%. Of that, you as the employer pay 18.5625% and the employee at most 6.1875%. The fund is working towards the new pension scheme from 1 January 2027, but that is only certain once the regulators agree.

Young people get the youth wage from the cao. In the Fashion wage table from 1 July 2026, in groups A and B, that is €5.17 an hour at 16, €5.92 at 17 and €7.50 at 18. The wage goes up in the pay period in which the employee has their birthday. Staff under 20 may not be alone in the shop, except during breaks. Working on Sundays is voluntary, with a 50% supplement. Whether your shop may open on Sundays is decided by your municipality.

It may, if you buy clothing directly abroad yourself. Whoever is first to bring textiles onto the Dutch market has been a producer since 1 July 2023. You then register with Rijkswaterstaat and submit a report every year before 1 August. If you buy from a Dutch wholesaler or the Dutch branch of a brand, that party is the producer. It does not apply to second-hand clothing. Shoes are not covered yet. That is going to change, but there is no fixed date yet.

If your sales to consumers in other EU countries are €10,000 or less in a calendar year, Dutch VAT usually applies. If you go above that, you charge the VAT of the customer's country. So keep track of those sales each year.

We mainly work for shops that are growing. Have you just started? On our page for starters you read what to arrange in your first year.