Court teaches teacher to count

In a statement from March 15 2011, the Court of Leeuwarden gave a detailed explanation of how the minimum hours condition for the self employed person’s allowance should be interpreted.

In this case, a homework tutor learned that when adding your hours, not everything counts.

When tutoring homework from your house not all business opening hours count towards the hours necessary to be eligible the self employed person’s allowance. The person concerned (X) started a business in 2005 whereby she took young people with learning and behavioural problems into her home and assisted them with their homework. The opening times of the business were from 12:30 to 6pm. In 2005 X wrote eleven invoices declaring a total of 139 hours. The total declared sales was €2,874. In her 2005 tax return X claimed the self employed person’s allowance. The tax officer said that X did not qualify for the allowance, because she did not fulfil the required hours.

The Court of Leeuwarden judged that not all the opening hours of the business are applicable for the allowance. Given the small number of clients and the fact that the clients were received at home, the court considered the actual declared hours a better measure to determine how much time X spent on her business. Furthermore the court considered the estimate of the number of hours provided by X too broad, and felt that X had not produced sufficient evidence that she had fulfilled the required hours to receive the allowance.