Your tax return is a job that comes round every year, and it can still be quite a complex puzzle. Often, a large part of the information for that return has already been filled in for you to make things a little easier. This is the VIA, the pre-filled tax return (vooraf ingevulde aangifte). The data is filled in by the Tax Authority (Belastingdienst), which in turn receives it from various organisations, such as your employer and your bank. But what exactly is the VIA and how does it work?
The pre-filled tax return fills in a lot of different data. How much data, and which data, is pre-filled differs from person to person. Think of details such as wages and income, mortgage details for your home, pension payments, bank balances and any deductible items (including healthcare costs and donations). This data is collected from employers, banks, insurers and other institutions. That saves you some digging around and time.
TaxMate takes care of your income tax return for you, of course, so you don't need to worry about it. But we can make things even easier for you with an ongoing authorisation (machtiging) for the VIA. With this authorisation, we can read your pre-filled data automatically and you no longer have to export it by hand. This means we can file a complete and accurate return for you, without you having to complete an extra step in our questionnaire before we can get started. Apart from that, not much changes. We'll still ask you to fill in the questionnaire and add the supporting documents. We need these to check the VIA and, where necessary, change it. After all, everyone makes a mistake now and then, and that includes the Tax Authority.
Of course, we don't just get access to your personal data. You have to give permission for this by means of an authorisation:
- We request the VIA for you from the Tax Authority. You then receive a letter from the Tax Authority with a nine-digit code that you can enter via a link.
- From that moment on, there is an ongoing authorisation. After that, you no longer need to look at the VIA yourself. You can withdraw the authorisation at any time (for example if your business stops).
Do you have questions about the VIA or about giving the authorisation? Feel free to get in touch, we're happy to help!