Booking water company invoice

Or, third option, should I pay (the entire amount) via my private account and then reimburse the professional percentage to my private account afterwards? I think this is too vague and complicated, but I have no idea what is most correct...

Thank you!

Whether you pay from your private bank account or your business account makes no difference for tax purposes if you are self-employed in secondary occupation, because then you are legally one identity. You simply enter 20% professional use on the total amount in Dexxter and it calculates this automatically. It is just clearer if you pay all your professional expenses with your business account and your private expenses with your private account. If you do pay your water bill from your private account, you do not have to transfer the 80% amount back from your private account to your business account (this makes no difference for tax purposes) because payments to yourself are meaningless. It is just like transferring money from your current account to your savings account or vice versa.
Johan

Thank you. Does this also apply to self-employed persons in their main occupation (legal profession – working in an office but would enter 20% at home as a professional expense for what I do here)? What is the best way to comply with the legislation?

Thank you in advance. Dear MV, You will then, of course, be subject to VAT (unless your turnover is less than €25,000, but I certainly don't wish that on you). You will then have two water invoices: one for your office (which you can claim as a 100% business expense) and one for your home. You must apply a realistic business percentage to the latter invoice. If, for example, you have a very spacious villa with a swimming pool and a sauna (and therefore much higher water consumption), you may only claim the proportion that you use for your profession. The tax authorities accept 20-30% unless you can demonstrate why it is more. To determine a realistic percentage, you could use the amount and type of taps, for example. Belgians consume an average of 95 to 100 litres of water per inhabitant per day. So you have to divide the consumption by the amount of inhabitants in your home (only you use water for professional purposes, your other family members only use it privately). If your office is just a room in your home, you also use the kitchen (to make coffee, to do the washing up) and the toilet. That gives you 2 normal taps (1 in the kitchen and 1 in the toilet), 1 dishwasher and 1 toilet. A dishwasher uses an average of between 10 and 20 litres of water per wash! Washing up by hand requires about 25 litres of water (about 15 litres of hot water and 10 litres of cold water). For the dishes, calculate the amount of litres per wash divided by the amount of family members x 20 or 25 litres (depending on whether you wash by hand or use the dishwasher). Flushing the toilet uses 7 to 12 litres of water, depending on whether you choose the small or large button. If your toilet is flushed with rainwater from your rainwater tank (only required for homes built, rebuilt or extended after 2014 or where the water management system has been edited after 2023), you can ignore your toilet consumption (it is not included in your water bill, except for the contribution to sewerage costs). For the toilet, calculate 7 x the average amount of small flushes + 12 x the number of large flushes per day. Add up the total per day for the toilet and the dishes. That is your daily consumption. Then convert that to the average number of days you work at home (e.g. 2 days per week) and divide it by 7 (days per week). This gives you the average daily usage. Multiply the daily usage by the number of working days per year (normally 220, but if you work 6 days a week, it will of course be more). This gives you your yearly professional usage. Then check your bill to see what your total yearly usage is. Divide your yearly professional usage by the total yearly usage (also check the number of days covered by the bill, as this is sometimes almost 13 months, sometimes just over 11 months) and multiply this by 100 to get the percentage of professional usage. You only have to do this complicated calculation once; in the next years, you can simply copy it over (unless something changes in your home situation, e.g. children moving into student accommodation or living independently, additional children, installation of an additional large consumer, installation of a rainwater tank with reuse of rainwater for toilet flushing).

Johan

Wow, thank you Johan, that's really kind!

Enjoy the rest of your evening, and hopefully the coming working week too.