DriveHubCountry guide · Netherlands
Seven years from when? Keeping a Dutch rittenregistratie, and when the clock starts
The Dutch number is well known: seven years. Fewer people know that the seven years begin when a record stops being current, which for a company car's rittenregistratie can be years after the drive.
The short answer
Seven years, under AWR art. 52 lid 4. Read with the Belastingdienst's rule, the seven years start when the record stops being current, not on 31 December. For a rittenregistratie kept for a company car that is usually the day the car stops being available to you. On that reading, a car you drove for three years starts its seven-year clock at the end of those three years.
The rule binds the administratieplichtige, meaning the business, the entrepreneur or the withholding agent. It does not bind the employee. And the cost of a record that cannot be produced is not a fine. The burden of proof moves to you.
The clock runs from when a record stops being current
Most retention rules count from the end of a year. In Sweden it is the end of the calendar year in which the financial year closed. In Denmark it is the end of the financial year the material relates to. A Dutch reader who has seen either of those will assume the same shape at home, and the assumption is wrong.
The Belastingdienst puts its own rule in two sentences: "Zolang gegevens actueel blijven, horen zij bij de administratie. Vervalt de actualiteitswaarde? Dan begint de bewaartermijn." While the data are still current they are part of the administration, and the retention period starts only once they stop being current.
A rittenregistratie is current for as long as the car it describes is available to you. It is the evidence behind the 500 private kilometres test of Wet LB art. 13bis lid 3, and that test is repeated every calendar year the car is at your disposal. Read with the Belastingdienst's rule, the log for a car available over three years starts its seven years only when the availability ends, so the first January's trips are kept for ten years or more.
The practical consequence is simple. Do not throw out the early years of a log while the car is still yours. Each of those years is still part of a live record.
Who do the seven years bind?
Art. 52 lid 2 lists who is administratieplichtig: bodies, entrepreneurs and withholding agents. An employee is not on the list.
That affects the most common Dutch case, an employee with an auto van de zaak who holds a Verklaring geen privégebruik auto and keeps a log to support it. A log kept privately for that purpose carries no statutory retention period of its own. The employer's payroll copy carries one. The duty sits with whoever administers the payroll, not with the driver.
That is not a reason to keep less. The log is still the only proof that the car stayed under 500 private kilometres, and the cost of losing that argument is the bijtelling for the whole year plus a naheffingsaanslag, as the 500 kilometre article sets out. An employee without a statutory period still has every reason to keep the record as long as the employer has to.
An entrepreneur is in a different position. A car held as a business asset has its own prescribed record under Uitvoeringsregeling inkomstenbelasting 2001 art. 9, word for word the same list as the employee's art. 3.13. An entrepreneur who drives a private car and deducts the per-kilometre figure has no prescribed form at all. That entrepreneur is under vrije bewijsleer, still within art. 52, so the administration has to stand up and the seven years apply to it.
Another format is allowed, an incomplete record is not
Two further parts of art. 52 bear on a digital log.
- Lid 5 expressly permits converting the administration to another carrier, provided the data stay complete and legible. An exported copy of an electronic log is the kind of conversion it contemplates, provided nothing is lost on the way.
- Lid 6 requires the administration to be auditable within a reasonable time. A record that exists but cannot be produced and checked in reasonable time does not meet it.
What those two leave out is a record that exists only inside a program you might stop using. Seven years from the end of a car's availability can run past the life of a phone, a subscription or an app. A retention plan that depends on the recording device still being around is not really a retention plan.
What failing it costs: the burden reverses
The sanction is not an estimate the inspector has to justify. Once an irrevocable informatiebeschikking has been issued, the burden of proof turns around. The assessment stands "tenzij is gebleken dat en in hoeverre die belastingaanslag … onjuist is" (art. 25 lid 3, art. 27e). It stands unless you show that it is wrong, and by how much.
For a rittenregistratie that turns the dispute around completely. The question stops being whether the inspector can show you drove more than 500 private kilometres. It becomes whether you can show you did not, years later and without the record that was made to prove it.
The field list that record has to hold (make, type, plate, the period of availability, and per trip the date, odometer, addresses, deviating route and character) is covered in the same article. For the same question in German law, where the period is set differently again, see why ten years and not eight in Germany.
Before you delete anything
- Is the car still available to you? Then the whole log is still current, and nothing in it is past its period.
- Has availability ended? Count seven years from that date, not from the end of the year of each trip.
- Are you an employee? You have no statutory period of your own, but the employer's copy does. Keep yours at least that long, because the bijtelling dispute is yours.
- Are you an entrepreneur? The seven years are yours, whichever of the two own-car routes you are on.
- Is the record in a form you can still open and hand over in reasonable time, without the program that made it?
Keeping a rittenregistratie complete, not only kept
A paper rittenregistratie kept for seven years after the car stops being yours meets the rule. What software changes is whether the record is complete enough to be worth keeping, and a log that is missing its private trips fails however long it is kept.
DriveHub records every drive in the background and asks afterwards which were business, so private trips are in the record whether or not you thought about them at the time. The report prints the car's make, plate and the period it was available to you. The end of that period is the date the seven years count from. For every trip it prints the date, the odometer at the start and end, both addresses and whether the trip was business or private.
Keep the exported report, not only the trips on the phone. DriveHub stores your trips on your iPhone and in your own private iCloud, and it makes PDF, Excel and CSV exports on the phone. A file is what lid 5 lets you keep, and it stays readable whether or not DriveHub is still on your phone.
This page states what the Algemene wet inzake rijksbelastingen and the Belastingdienst say, and names the articles so you can check. It is not tax advice. It can't account for your circumstances. Where money is involved, ask your belastingadviseur, and bring the administration.
The full rule for Netherlands, with the instruments it comes from: mileage log requirements in the Netherlands.