Investment deduction for a startup: KIA, MIA and VAMIL

Three schemes lower your profit when you invest in business assets, and each has a threshold or a deadline that decides whether you get anything at all. Here are the 2026 bands, what is excluded, what comes back if you sell within five years, and the three month reporting deadline that catches most people out.

Three schemes, three purposes

If you invest in business assets there are three schemes that lower your profit, and they are separate from each other. The small-scale investment deduction, the KIA, applies to investments in general. The environmental investment deduction, the MIA, and the arbitrary depreciation of environmental investments, the VAMIL, apply only to assets on the Milieulijst, the environmental list.

The WBSO sits outside this: it is about hours spent on development work, not about purchases. If you build a product yourself, that is a separate route.

The KIA: how the amount works

The KIA hangs on your total investment in a financial year, not on a single purchase. For 2026 the bands look like this:

• No more than 2,900 euros: no deduction.
• 2,901 up to and including 71,683 euros: 28 per cent of the investment.
• 71,684 up to and including 132,746 euros: a fixed amount of 20,072 euros.
• 132,747 up to and including 398,236 euros: 20,072 euros, reduced by 7.56 per cent of the part above 132,746 euros.
• More than 398,236 euros: no deduction.

Two conditions that often get missed: assets with a purchase price under 450 euros do not count, and the asset has to have been put into use in your business. A 900 euro laptop counts, a 40 euro mouse does not.

What is excluded

• Passenger cars, with the exception of cars intended for professional transport, such as taxis and courier services.
• Residential homes and land.
• Goods you rent out.
• Assets you use abroad.

Sell it within five years and some of it comes back

The disinvestment addition is the mirror image of the deduction. If you sell or give away an asset within five years of the start of the calendar year in which you invested, and the value of what you dispose of is jointly more than 2,900 euros, you add part of the deduction you took back to your profit. You use the same percentage as for the deduction, and the addition never exceeds what you received.

There is a less well known variant: if you do not put the asset into use within three years of the start of the calendar year of the investment, that is treated as a disposal too.

MIA and VAMIL: only what is on the environmental list

For MIA and VAMIL it is not your judgement but the Milieulijst that decides whether an asset qualifies. Every asset on that list has a code, and the code sets the percentage. With the MIA you deduct up to 45 per cent of the investment cost from your profit on top of normal depreciation. With the VAMIL you may depreciate up to 75 per cent of the investment at a moment you choose yourself. RVO puts the benefit of the two together at just over 14 per cent of the investment.

Two hard requirements: the investment cost of the reported asset is at least 2,500 euros, and you report the investment to RVO within three months of the order date. Those three months are where it usually goes wrong, because they run from the moment you place the order and not from the invoice or the delivery.

What this means for a startup

In the early years a software startup often invests little in assets: a few laptops and some peripherals, and then you stay under the KIA floor. Where it does start to matter is the year you fit out an office, buy hardware, or set up a lab or a production line. That is also the year the MIA and the VAMIL can come into view, for instance with making a building more sustainable or with certain equipment.

The point is not that you should invest in order to get a deduction. The point is not to let an investment you are making anyway pass unreported, because a three month reporting deadline cannot be repaired afterwards.

What we do about this

We book your investments as assets rather than as costs where that applies, keep your investment register, and apply the KIA in your corporate income tax return. If you pass on an order for something that might be on the environmental list, we check the codes on that list and watch the reporting deadline at RVO.

What we do not do is advise you on what to invest in or how to structure an investment for tax. That is advice, and it belongs with a specialist. We make sure the figures underneath are right and that the deduction you are entitled to actually lands in your return.

In short

• The KIA hangs on your total investment per financial year, with a 2026 floor of 2,900 euros and a ceiling of 398,236 euros.
• Assets under 450 euros do not count, and the asset has to have been put into use.
• Passenger cars, residential homes, land and goods you rent out are excluded.
• Disposing within five years triggers a disinvestment addition, never higher than the deduction you took.
• MIA and VAMIL apply only to the environmental list, with a 2,500 euro floor and a three month reporting deadline from the order date.