WBSO, Get 36-50% Back on R&D Costs

The WBSO (Wet Bevordering Speur- en Ontwikkelingswerk) is the Netherlands' largest innovation subsidy with a €1.8 billion budget in 2026. It provides an R&D tax credit of 36-50% on labor costs for innovative development work. Over 20,000 companies use the WBSO every year.

For software companies and SMEs investing in data or AI, the WBSO is often the most valuable subsidy. It applies to any technically innovative development: from custom applications and data dashboards to AI models and automation tools.

Any company in the Netherlands that performs R&D activities can apply. The key criterion is that your project involves a "new informatics principle", meaning the technical approach is new for your company. You don't need to invent something entirely new; building a custom solution for your specific use case already qualifies.

Both employers and self-employed professionals (ZZP) can apply. The WBSO is sector-independent: whether you're in manufacturing, logistics, healthcare, or retail, if you develop innovative software, you likely qualify.

Starters receive 50% on the first €391,020 in R&D labor costs. Non-starters receive 36%. Above €391,020, the rate is 16% for everyone. For a typical software project of €60,000, the WBSO can yield €12,000-18,000 in tax savings, effectively making your investment 20-30% cheaper.

Combined with the MIT scheme, total subsidies can exceed €30,000 on a single project. Stratalytic calculates the optimal combination for your specific situation.

Small project: custom integration tool. A logistics company invests €30,000 in developing a new API integration between their warehouse management system and an external carrier platform. The development involves a technically novel data synchronization approach. As a non-starter the WBSO yields 36%, resulting in approximately €10,800 in tax benefit. For a starter the rate climbs to 50%, delivering up to €15,000 back, cutting almost half the development cost.

Medium project: AI-powered quality control. A manufacturing SME allocates €80,000 to build a computer vision system that automatically detects product defects on the production line. This involves novel AI model training and real-time image processing algorithms. A non-starter receives €28,800 (36%) and a starter receives up to €40,000 (50%) via the WBSO, making an ambitious innovation project financially accessible for a mid-sized manufacturer.

Combined WBSO + MIT: data dashboard project. A healthcare organization invests €60,000 in a data dashboard that aggregates patient flow data from multiple hospital systems. The WBSO covers 36-50% of the development hours (€21,600-30,000), while an MIT feasibility study adds up to €10,000 for the initial research phase. The combined subsidy benefit totals approximately €32,000, more than half the project cost returned through government incentives.

Once the WBSO is granted, your company is required to maintain an S&O hour registration. Every team member who performs R&D work must log their hours accurately, specifying which WBSO project the hours belong to. RVO requires this administration to be kept within ten working days of the actual work performed, late or incomplete registrations can lead to corrections or even reclaims of the granted benefit.

In addition to hour registration, you must keep a project log or technical diary that documents the research questions, technical challenges, tested approaches, and outcomes. This diary demonstrates the innovative character of the work and serves as evidence during potential audits by RVO. A well-maintained project diary also makes the year-end accountability significantly easier to complete.

At the end of the S&O declaration period, you submit a final accountability report (mededeling) to RVO. This report contains the actual S&O hours spent per project and any material costs claimed. If actual hours deviate significantly from the original application, you must report this promptly. Failure to submit the mededeling on time can result in revocation of the entire benefit for that period.

Stratalytic takes the administrative burden off your shoulders. We set up the hour registration system, maintain the technical project diary as part of our development process, and prepare the year-end mededeling. Because we execute the R&D work ourselves, our project documentation naturally aligns with what RVO expects, reducing audit risk and ensuring you retain the full benefit without administrative headaches.

Stratalytic is unique: we both write the WBSO application and execute the R&D project. This means the technical description perfectly matches the actual development work, the number one reason applications succeed. No miscommunication between a subsidy advisor who doesn't understand the tech and a developer who doesn't know what RVO wants.

We handle everything: the S&O application, the technical project description, the administration during the project, and the final accountability. You focus on your business; we deliver the innovation and the subsidy.

Our team specializes in software development, data engineering, and artificial intelligence, exactly the domains where WBSO applications require the most technical depth. We understand how to frame a machine learning pipeline, a cloud migration, or a custom software platform in the language RVO recognizes as innovative. That domain expertise, combined with our track record of successful applications, means your project gets the strongest possible case from day one.