BASE in Amsterdam ran another edition of its “Let’s Touch BASE” series: “Get Your Taxes Right as a Small Business Owner.” Running a business gives you freedom, but VAT, income tax, deductions, compliance, and financial planning are exactly the parts of that freedom nobody enjoys figuring out alone — which is the entire premise of BASE’s small, workshop-format events over the larger BASE Conference format.
The Numbers Behind the Advice
Mark Bastiaans opened with context most tax workshops skip entirely: the Dutch government’s own Miljoenennota 2026 (the annual budget memorandum) — €451.4 billion in income against €486.3 billion in spending, broken down by category. Starting there, rather than jumping straight to VAT mechanics, reframes the rest of the session correctly: your quarterly BTW return is not an arbitrary hassle, it is one small piece of a system whose inputs and outputs are entirely public and auditable. Understanding the shape of that system makes the specific rules easier to reason about, not just memorize.
Workshop: Smarter Tax Decisions for Small Business Owners
Mark Bastiaans and Dutchtaxadvice.nl led the core workshop, and the single reframing that mattered most was right there on the slide: VAT is a flow, not a cost. The practical rhythm broken down into four steps:
- Invoice — charge VAT at the correct rate, with the correct details, whenever a supply is taxable and no exemption or reverse charge applies.
- Collect — separate VAT from revenue the moment it arrives, not at filing time.
- Offset — deduct input VAT only when the invoice and the business purpose actually support it.
- File and pay — submission and payment timing both matter; a correct return filed late is still a problem.
The simple habit that ties it together: reserve VAT in a separate bank account the moment a customer pays. Treating VAT cash as tax money rather than working capital is the single biggest mindset shift that prevents a Q4 cash crunch caused by spending money that was never really yours.
Beyond VAT mechanics, the session covered the broader territory small business owners consistently get wrong: common tax and compliance mistakes, deductions that go unclaimed simply because nobody flagged them, and how to structure business finances so tax obligations do not become a surprise every quarter.
Fireside Chat: Building Through Change, Curiosity, and Co-Creation
The evening closed with a fireside conversation between Veronica Guguian and Mary Schooler — a deliberate contrast to the structured workshop that preceded it. Mary’s path ran from launching a side business in the United States, to studying Global Health in China, to leading technology and implementation projects for a hospital system, to building a freelance career in Belgium. Today she works with Stickydot, a participatory co-creation consultancy built around a distinction worth sitting with: helping organizations build solutions with people, rather than simply for them.
The throughline of the conversation was that entrepreneurship rarely follows the linear path job postings imply. Moving between countries and industries is not a detour from a “real” career — for a lot of founders and freelancers, it is the actual mechanism by which new opportunities and collaborations show up. Curiosity and community did more for Mary’s trajectory than any single deliberate five-year plan could have.
Why the Combination Works
Pairing a hard compliance workshop with a fireside chat about nonlinear careers is a better format than either alone. The tax session gives you something you can act on the next morning — open a separate VAT account, review last quarter’s deductions. The fireside chat gives you the longer-horizon reminder that the structure you build around your finances is in service of a business path that is allowed to look nothing like anyone else’s.
Thanks to BASE, Dutchtaxadvice.nl, Mark Bastiaans, Veronica Guguian, Mary Schooler, and Stickydot for putting together an evening that was equal parts practical and genuinely useful for anyone running a small business, freelancing, or navigating the Dutch system as an expat entrepreneur.
Related Reading
- BASE Conference 2024: AI and Digital Equity
- CRA for Startups and SMEs: Compliance Guide
- Meeting JT Foxx: Lessons on Scaling a Tech Business
About the Author
I am Luca Berton, AI and Cloud Advisor. I work with founders, freelancers, and enterprises on technology strategy and platform engineering. Book a consultation.
