Recovering VAT from Belgium costs you nothing upfront at vatea.eu. There is no subscription and no setup costs; you pay a percentage of the amount that the Belgian tax authority actually grants you. If nothing comes back, you pay nothing either. The costs are therefore always derived from the result, never a fixed amount that is separate from what you receive.
That immediately raises a follow-up question: where does that recovered amount come from, and what determines how high it is? These are actually two separate questions. The first concerns the source of the money — the Belgian VAT you have already paid on business expenses. The second concerns its scope, and that depends on what receipts you have, what Belgium allows from those, and how completely it is submitted.
Where the amount comes from
The money that comes back is not a subsidy or discount. It is VAT you already paid in Belgium when you fuelled up, stayed overnight, paid tolls, exhibited at a trade fair or ate for business purposes, and which you cannot deduct in your Dutch tax return because you are not established in Belgium. Directive 2008/9 gives you the right to claim that VAT back from the refund country itself, via a request that is forwarded through the Dutch Tax Authority. It is therefore your own money that you are recovering, not a bonus that someone is granting you.
The success fee that corresponds to this is compensation for the work involved: reading and classifying receipts according to the correct expense category, checking what Belgium allows per category, bundling into a request that meets the threshold, submitting and monitoring the process until payment. What that work costs in euros is directly dependent on what is granted — not on how many hours are spent on it.
What determines the amount of the refund
Three things mainly determine how much comes back, and thus also how much the success fee represents in absolute euros. First, the volume: how many business expenses were made in Belgium this year, and are the receipts for them complete and legible. Second, the expense category: Belgium does not allow every category at one hundred percent, and some expense categories are subject to restrictions that vary by country. Third, the completeness of the request: receipts that are not submitted because they were never uploaded do not yield anything, no matter how correct the rest of the administration is.
Anyone in doubt about whether the amount is worth the effort does not have to guess. With a few questions about your business travel you immediately get an indication in euros of what is at stake for your situation, without needing an account for that.
What remains free
The calculator and the complete knowledge base are and remain free, even without an account. This applies to the short answer per topic, the risk indication and the location in the official text. Only if you actually want requests to be submitted do you need a business account with the associated onboarding: business details, the usual customer due diligence and the mandate by which submissions are made on your behalf. These steps do not cost money in themselves; they are the prerequisite for being permitted to start the process.
When you pay nothing
The success fee is only calculated on what actually comes in. If a request is rejected, partially granted or remains below the threshold for a period, the fee is proportionally lower on that, or zero if nothing is granted. There is no upfront invoicing based on an estimate; the indication from the calculator is precisely that, an indication, and only the amount that the refund country actually grants is money. Anyone wanting to consult the exact scale and conditions will find them on the page with the rates.
Do it yourself or outsource
Nothing stops you from using the tax authority's portal directly; the right to a refund is independent of who submits it. The trade-off lies in the time it takes to sustain it: classifying invoices by country and by period, monitoring thresholds and not missing the four-month window. For businesses that want to run this alongside daily operations, the fee is a percentage of the result rather than hours that will be spent anyway. Read more about which costs fall under which category and how that differs per situation on the overview of VAT refund requests by situation.
Want to know first whether it is worthwhile for your business before you decide anything about costs? Take the free quick-scan or browse through the other topics in the knowledge base; both cost nothing and commit you to nothing.