Tech & Digital

App and Platform Income: Where It Is Taxed and How to Plan

Updated: 18 August 2026 Apps Platforms Income

Platform income arrives pre-processed: the store took its cut, handled the consumer’s VAT, and wired the remainder from wherever it sits. Mapping what actually happened — and taxing it once, properly — is the app founder’s finance homework. The map.

The VAT layer: the platform did it

For app-store and marketplace sales to consumers, the platform typically acts as deemed supplier: it charges and remits the consumer’s local VAT, and your supply to the platform runs B2B — reverse-charged, clean. Direct sales from your own site take the OSS route instead: that system. The mapping per revenue stream — store, direct, ads, in-app — is a one-afternoon exercise that prevents years of double-counting.

The income layer: one home

All streams land as business profit in the BV at 19% to €200,000 — and the technology’s share can ride the 9% innovation box: the box. Foreign platform payouts occasionally arrive with source-country withholding attached; the treaty network claims it back or credits it — the US chapter being the frequent one: the treaty page.

The planning layer

Holding above the app BV from day one (the exit thesis: why it pays), the founder’s salary-and-borrowing levers tuned through the growth years (the founder-salary chapter), and the revenue map revisited each January as stores change their terms.

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Frequently Asked Questions

Apple and Google already took VAT — do I charge it again? +

For consumer sales where the store is deemed supplier: their job, done. Your invoice to the platform is B2B, VAT reverse-charged — charging consumers again would be exactly the double-count the mapping prevents.

How is ad revenue from foreign networks taxed? +

As ordinary BV profit — typically paid gross under the treaty network, with any source withholding credited. The stream map assigns each payout its treatment once.

How current is this page? +

Reviewed 18 August 2026; the deemed-supplier model and rates are the current set.

Sources Belastingdienst · KVK · wetten.overheid.nl Last updated: 18 August 2026