The deed is signed, the trade register extract has arrived, and the group treats the Dutch entry as done. It is not done. What has been completed is the part that a notary controls and can therefore be scheduled. What remains is a sequence of registrations held by three different institutions, each with its own logic, its own identification requirements and its own idea of what a foreign shareholder looks like. None of them is difficult in isolation. Together they are where a Dutch entry usually loses a month.
The pattern is consistent enough to be predicted. A group that budgeted carefully for the notary discovers that it cannot file a return, cannot clear goods and, in some cases, cannot even log in to the tax portal, because the company has no eHerkenning yet and the one person authorised to act for it lives abroad. The remedies exist. They take time, and they are almost never on the timetable.
What the trade register number settles, and what it leaves open
The KVK number identifies the company in the trade register. It is the number counterparties ask for, the number that appears on invoices and the number a bank will want before it opens a file. It does not, by itself, register the entity for any tax, authorise anyone to act for it before the Dutch tax authorities, or permit it to file a customs declaration.
That separation is deliberate. The trade register records who exists and where. The Belastingdienst decides, separately, which taxes the entity is within. Dutch Customs maintains a third identifier, the EORI number, for businesses that deal with customs. Three registers, three purposes, and no single moment at which a company becomes operational in all of them at once.
The tax registration that follows, and the wait
For an entity registered at the KVK, the tax registration is largely a consequence rather than an application. The Belastingdienst states that KVK passes the registration on to it, so the business does not register with it separately, and that registration in its administration takes a maximum of ten working days, after which the entity is told which taxes it will deal with. The government business portal is more specific on value added tax: its page on Dutch business numbers says that the VAT number follows within ten working days of the KVK registration and that no application is needed. KVK, for its part, tells businesses to expect a letter with the VAT identification number, usually within two weeks, if the tax authorities determine that they are entrepreneurs for VAT purposes.
There is a wrinkle worth naming rather than glossing. KVK guidance describes the bv and the nv as having to register with the tax authorities separately, with the registration at both KVK and the tax authorities handled by the civil-law notary and an RSIN issued as the entity identifier, and the business portal’s own page on business numbers also says that a legal entity will have to register with the tax authorities separately, a few lines from its sentence that no application is needed. In practice the outcome for a plain trading bv is the same letter, but where the entity is a pure holding with no taxable supplies, the question of whether it is an entrepreneur for VAT purposes is a real one and the outcome is not a given: the portal’s page on VAT numbers describes the tax authorities as letting the business know whether it is an entrepreneur for VAT purposes. It should be settled before anyone promises a client a VAT identification number by a given date.
Where a foreign-owned file slows down
Nothing in the published tax registration procedure for a KVK-registered bv distinguishes one owned in Rotterdam from one owned in Riyadh. What distinguishes them in practice is the description of the intended activity and the ease of verifying it. A VAT identification number is issued to an entrepreneur, and under Article 7 of the Wet op de omzetbelasting 1968 an entrepreneur is anyone who independently carries on a business, a term the same article extends to the exploitation of an asset to obtain income from it on a continuing basis. Where the file describes management services to a parent, an intragroup licence or a holding function with an occasional recharge, the tax authorities are being asked to accept an assertion about future activity from a structure they cannot observe.
The consequence is questions, and questions consume the calendar rather than the file. In the files we have seen, what arrives varies with the file and the office. What can be said with confidence is that the answers a group gives here should match the answers already given to the notary and those it will give to a bank. Inconsistency between the three is the single most reliable way to convert a two week registration into a two month one.
Where the foreign parent itself has Dutch tax obligations but no Dutch establishment, a different path applies. The Belastingdienst publishes a registration form for foreign companies covering VAT, the One Stop Shop, corporation tax, payroll taxes, transfer tax and dividend tax, which is printed, signed and posted to its office in Heerlen. According to its guidance on the competent tax office, Dutch VAT matters for foreign entrepreneurs are handled by its Department of International Issues, except for entrepreneurs who use a tax representative, whose tax office then deals with the file. A form sent by post is not a scandal, but it is not a same day process either, and it belongs in the plan.
eHerkenning, and why a non-resident director cannot simply log in
eHerkenning is the Dutch electronic login for organisations, which the Belastingdienst compares to the DigiD that individuals use, but for businesses. It is supplied only by suppliers approved by the Dutch government, and its price and the time it takes to obtain vary between them. For its portals, including Mijn Belastingdienst Zakelijk, where VAT and payroll tax returns can be filed, the Belastingdienst requires assurance level EH3 or higher. The same guidance notes that no eHerkenning is needed where the company files through administration software it has bought or through a tax service provider.
That level is where a non-resident director meets the obstacle. Under the scheme’s description of its levels of assurance, a copy of a legal identity document suffices at EH2+, the level below. At EH3 the check uses the legal identity document itself, not a copy, and depending on the supplier takes the form of a face to face check at a location the applicant chooses, a remote identification by app or video verification, or either; it applies to the legal representative, the authorisation manager and the user. Save for the product without a KVK number described below, the organisation must also be entered in the trade register, and the application needs a trade register extract that is not more than fourteen days old, so the company must already be registered before the login can be obtained. On average an application takes between zero and a few days, and suppliers offer expedited procedures under which the login can in most cases be used within twenty four hours, often at additional cost and under specific conditions.
None of this is insurmountable. It is simply a personal identity procedure, conducted from abroad with a commercial supplier, and it cannot begin until the entity is in the trade register. A director who assumed that the tax portal would open with a password has lost the first filing deadline before understanding why.
The route for a company without a KVK number
Where a company cannot or need not register with KVK, for example because it is established abroad, the tax authorities accept a specific product, an eHerkenning without a KVK number, which on their own guidance can be used only to log in to the Belastingdienst and Customs and does not yet give access to the data portals through which data is supplied to or requested from the Belastingdienst. The application uses the tax number the Belastingdienst has issued rather than a trade register number, so a company without one first obtains it by registering with the Belastingdienst.
The state contributes to the cost. The compensation scheme run by the Netherlands Enterprise Agency pays thirty six euros and twenty four cents a year including VAT, an amount based on the lowest price on the market, for one such login per organisation per year, and is not available to a business that authorises a tax service provider to file its returns on its behalf. A separate application is made for each calendar year, and for costs of calendar year 2025 the application window was set from the first of January 2026 up to and including the thirtieth of September 2026. The sum is trivial. Its usefulness is as a signal that the government treats this as a recognised category of taxpayer rather than an anomaly, which is not always how it feels from the outside.
Entrepreneurs established elsewhere in the European Union should not count on their own national electronic identity as a substitute. The Belastingdienst accepts a European login recognised under the eIDAS Regulation for a sole proprietor who holds a Dutch citizen service number and the nationality of a covered country, but states that approved electronic identities for European companies and organisations are not yet available, and that a foreign legal entity can log in to Mijn Belastingdienst Zakelijk only with eHerkenning.
EORI, and when it actually matters
An EORI number identifies economic operators to customs. The trigger is often misunderstood. Article 9 of the Union Customs Code requires economic operators established in the customs territory of the Union to register with the customs authorities where they are established, and the Code defines an economic operator as a person who, in the course of business, is involved in activities covered by the customs legislation. Dutch Customs puts it in practical terms: the number is needed when the company or its forwarder imports or exports goods outside the European Union, and it is used when lodging a declaration or applying for an authorisation. A company whose business is services, or goods bought and sold within the internal market, will often have no customs activity to register for.
For a company established in the Netherlands that lodges its own customs declarations in the Netherlands, the number need not be applied for separately. Dutch Customs allows it to be composed in the first declaration, by taking the letters NL and adding the RSIN, padded with leading zeros to nine digits; it is registered automatically with that first declaration or with an application for a customs authorisation, and the company is asked to check, after at most five working days, whether it has been granted. Where the company does not lodge its own declarations, for instance because a customs agent lodges them on its behalf, the number is requested through the Nationale Helpdesk Douane, and Customs undertakes to say within five working days whether it has been granted. There is no charge in either case.
The practical error is not procedural but commercial. Groups that intend to import through a Dutch logistics provider frequently assume the provider’s arrangements cover them. They do not: where the provider lodges the import declaration as representative, the Customs overview of EORI data in declarations makes the EORI number of the represented company mandatory, unless it is a private individual. The discovery is usually made with goods already in a port.
Payroll, and the registration nobody schedules
Hiring the first employee requires a further registration as an employer, which the Belastingdienst asks for no later than the day the first employee starts, producing a payroll tax number distinct from the VAT identifiers, usually within a week of that start. This is the step most often left until a start date has already been agreed with a candidate. It also interacts with the eHerkenning question, because payroll tax returns are due every month or every four weeks, and for an employer that files them itself in Mijn Belastingdienst Zakelijk that rhythm leaves no slack for a login that has not yet arrived.
Where a group intends to second an existing employee rather than hire locally, the analysis is not only a registration question but also one of where the employment is exercised and which social security system applies. Within the European Union that is decided by Regulation (EC) No 883/2004, whose Article 11 points to the Member State where the activity is pursued, subject to the special rules in its Articles 12 to 16. Where the employer temporarily posts the employee from another state of the European Economic Area or from Switzerland, including to a branch or to a company of the same group, Article 8 of the Wet arbeidsvoorwaarden gedetacheerde werknemers in de Europese Unie requires the employer to notify the posting before the work starts, subject to the exceptions set by decree, which the government business portal summarises for posted workers, and, subject to the exceptions described there, the business for which the employee works in the Netherlands must check the copy of the notification it receives and report any errors or a missing copy. That deserves settling before the entity is formed, not after the payroll number arrives.
Sequencing what remains
The order that works is unglamorous. Settle the description of the activity before the KVK filing, because the tax authorities will read it. Start the eHerkenning application on the day the trade register extract is issued, since the application needs an extract no more than fourteen days old and the identity check can add time. Establish how the EORI number will be obtained by asking who will lodge the declarations, since that decides whether it can be composed in a first declaration or must be requested from Customs. Register as an employer before a start date is promised.
Above all, treat these four registrations as a single workstream with one owner rather than as tidying up after the notary. They are held by different institutions, and no institution in the chain regards the others’ delays as its problem.
This article is informational and does not constitute tax, legal or investment advice. Each engagement is subject to scope and applicable regulation.