WBSO

What it funds

The WBSO cuts the payroll tax you owe on research and development work: the benefit is netted off your tax return, it never arrives as a payment. The base is research hours times the average hourly wage, plus the project's costs and expenditures, as a flat sum or at actuals. For self-employed people with no staff the mechanism is different: a fixed deduction from taxable income, higher in the first years as a starter.

The yearly budget is not a fund that runs out: there is no ceiling per application and no cap on the number of applications, and surpluses and overruns are settled against the next year's budget, which can mean lower rates but never closes applications, as the minister's letter presenting the budget and parameters explains. The full rate applies up to a threshold on the base and a lower one above it, and starters get a higher first bracket: the exact figures are in RVO's parameters. The statute behind it is the Wet vermindering afdracht.

Requirements and what is left out

• Anyone configuring standard software or adopting existing products: the development has to be technically new to your company, with technical problems you or your staff genuinely solve. With no technical risk there is no research and development.
• Anyone whose work is already done: only future work qualifies. The application goes in before the period starts: for employers the period starts on the first of the month after the application, for self-employed people on the day itself. The deadlines are in the RVO calendar.
• The project has to run in an EU member state: the United Kingdom no longer counts.
• Self-employed people with no staff: it takes at least 500 research hours a year inside at least 1,225 total hours, recorded separately.
• Employers: only the hours of staff on your own payroll count. Agency workers, interns and hours billed by outsiders never count as hours. Outsourced research is out entirely; only supporting work commissioned outside, such as a test or a prototype, counts as a cost, and only if you claim actual costs instead of the flat rate.
• Public knowledge institutions cannot apply for the WBSO.
• Anyone not keeping a daily record of hours by person and by project, with documents showing progress: without it, the benefit does not survive verification. RVO describes what to keep.

How to apply

1. Describe what you are developing, why it is technically new to your company, which technical problems you expect and how you plan to solve them, with estimated hours and costs through year end.
2. File the application in the RVO portal with level 3 eHerkenning, before the work starts: starting in January means applying in December.
3. From the first day of the period, record hours every day, and any costs, by person and by project, as the S&O-administratie requires.
4. Net the benefit off your payroll or income tax return, and at year end report the actual hours to RVO.

The RVO calendar gives the last useful day of each window, different for employers and for self-employed people. The application process describes the sequence in full: with a clear project, the application takes a few hours to prepare.

What this budget builds

The right scope is software that does not exist yet: an algorithm built on the company's data, an integration across sources never connected before, a prototype solving a genuine technical problem. I help structure the dossier the way RVO judges it: hypotheses, tests, results and hours tracked day by day, because technical novelty has to be demonstrated and the record-keeping is part of the work. And I leave your team the method to repeat the application next year without starting from zero.

This entry is informational and is not advice: I do not handle grant applications, and before committing to a purchase it is worth reading the official source above or talking to whoever files the application.