DAFT Extension After 2 Years: The Evidence IND Actually Wants (and How to Prepare It)

The first DAFT application can feel forgiving. The extension is where proof matters. If your administration is clean, the renewal is straightforward. If your admin is messy, renewal turns into a scramble.

This is an information-first, desk-ready playbook. It explains what the IND checks at treaty renewal, why bank screenshots are not the answer, and how to build a renewal packet that is easy to verify.

Scope note: Educational information only. Expat Advisory provides planning, education, and coordination. We do not provide legal services, file applications on your behalf, file taxes, or execute investment transactions. Requirements and procedures can change, so verify the current IND page and the current IND form before you submit anything.

The one sentence goal

When your residence card is approaching expiry, you want professional interim financial statements that show (1) your business has been active and (2) your invested capital has been maintained, without hunting through email threads and bank screenshots.

This is mostly an admin problem. Most renewal stress comes from missing records and unclear bookkeeping, not from the DAFT rules themselves. Fix the system early and the renewal becomes routine.

In this article

What changes at DAFT extension

At first application, DAFT can feel friendly because the process is designed to be approachable. At extension, the IND is no longer evaluating intentions. The IND is evaluating outcomes and proof. That means your paper trail becomes the product.

Two years is long enough for small habits to compound. If you mixed personal and business spending, skipped consistent invoicing, or let documents live in random places, renewal becomes a reconstruction project. If you kept a clean system, renewal becomes a handoff.

Keep this simple: renewal success is strongly correlated with whether your business admin can be understood by someone else quickly. The IND wants clarity. Your accountant wants clarity. Future you wants clarity.

Timing: when to apply so you avoid a residence gap

Do not wait until the last month and do not submit too early. The IND states you can apply for extension when your residence permit will expire within three months. If your permit is valid for more than three months, the IND will not accept the extension application yet because they cannot properly assess it.

The IND also explains the residence-gap risk. Apply while your permit is still valid. If your permit has just expired, the IND advises submitting within four weeks after expiry so the permits can succeed each other and you do not create a gap in residence history.

A practical point that gets missed: the IND also indicates a decision period of up to 90 days for many extensions. You should plan your prep around that reality, not around optimism.

A calm renewal timeline you can follow

When What you do Why it matters
6 months before expiry Audit your admin: are invoices organized, are bank statements exported, are owner transfers clearly labeled, and is bookkeeping current? You still have time to fix gaps without paying “urgent” premiums.
4 months before expiry Confirm accountant availability and timeline. Ask whether they can produce interim statements, not just year-end packages. Most delays happen here, not with the IND.
3 months before expiry The IND window opens. Prepare your forms and start compiling your renewal packet, but submit inside the official timing rules. Submitting too early can be disregarded. Submitting too late risks a residence gap.
6 to 8 weeks before expiry Request interim balance sheet and profit and loss statements for the relevant periods, prepared by an authorised external expert (for example an accountant). This is the core evidence for treaty renewal.
3 to 4 weeks before expiry Finalize the packet. Check that statements, invoices, and bank exports tell the same story. Fill in the application and prepare payment. This is where consistency prevents follow-up questions.
Submission Submit within the IND window and, ideally, before your current permit expires. This is how you avoid unnecessary interruptions and stress.

The IND requirement that matters most

If you are extending under a Friendship Treaty route (the IND form references U.S. and Japanese nationals relying on a treaty), the extension form is unusually direct about what evidence the IND expects. You need professional financial statements for the current and previous financial year, including an interim balance sheet and profit and loss statement, prepared and verified by an authorised external expert (for example an accountant). The purpose is to show that the invested capital has been maintained.

The key line to remember from the IND form: “A bank statement is not sufficient.”

That single sentence should change how you operate from day one. If you build your renewal plan around screenshots, you will eventually hit a wall. Build your renewal plan around clean bookkeeping and professional statements, and screenshots become irrelevant.

What the IND is actually testing at treaty renewal

The IND’s self-employed residence permit page explains the logic in plain language. For treaty-based extensions, the IND checks whether your company has been active and whether the invested capital remained in the business. That is the frame. Everything else is evidence.

IND test What it means in real life What your file should show
Business activity You actually operated a business over time, not a dormant entity. Invoices, deposits that connect to invoices, reasonable expenses that match your work, and consistent records month to month.
Capital maintained Your capital story is stable and explainable. Balance sheet and profit and loss statement that support “invested capital maintained,” with owner transfers documented cleanly and without personal spending chaos inside business flows.

A common fear is “do I need to be profitable?” The IND sources above frame renewal around activity and maintained invested capital. They do not frame it as a profitability test. Practically, profit still matters because repeated losses can reduce equity and make the “capital maintained” story harder to support. The point is not to panic. The point is to run records that show what happened and keep the capital base stable.

Think like a reviewer. The fastest approvals come from files where the statements, bank exports, invoices, and business narrative all point in the same direction. Consistency is the hidden requirement.

Annual accounts vs interim statements (plain English)

DAFT renewal terminology confuses people because the IND uses both “annual accounts” language and “interim statements” language across pages and forms. Treat them as related outputs with different timing.

Annual accounts are your closed-year package. It summarizes the full financial year and is usually produced in the year-end bookkeeping process.

Interim statements are your “as of today” picture. Renewal timing rarely aligns perfectly with year-end, so you need interim outputs for the current year as well as the previous year periods relevant to renewal.

Practical takeaway: if your accountant can only produce year-end statements once per year, you should address that early. Renewal is not the time to discover you cannot get interim statements on a reasonable timeline.

Why a bank statement fails the renewal test

Here is the trap that causes the most unnecessary stress: people hear “minimum capital” and assume renewal is about showing a minimum bank balance. So they top up temporarily, move money around, and treat the account like a stage prop.

The IND form explicitly rejects that approach. The IND wants professional statements that show capital maintained. A bank statement is a partial snapshot. It does not show liabilities, it does not show equity, and it does not show business activity over time. It is also easy to manipulate without actually maintaining a stable capital story.

Your solution is not more screenshots. Your solution is to run bookkeeping that can produce interim statements whenever needed, supported by clean underlying records.

“Capital maintained” and equity, explained without jargon

“Capital maintained” sounds like a cash question. In practice, it is closer to an equity question. Equity is what the business has left after accounting for what it owes. It is the owner’s stake inside the business.

That is why you can have cash in the bank and still have a weak renewal story if the business owes money or if the owner extracted value in a way that reduced the capital base. The balance sheet and profit and loss statement exist to show the whole picture.

The mindset that keeps renewal simple

Treat your DAFT invested capital like business equity. Document owner transfers clearly. Keep personal spending out of the business account. Then your statements can do the talking.

What people do Why it creates renewal risk What to do instead
Use the business account for personal life Records become unreadable and harder to verify. Use clear owner transfers and keep personal spending separate.
Top up cash briefly before exporting a statement A staged snapshot does not demonstrate capital maintained over time. Maintain a stable capital base and let statements reflect it consistently.
Skip consistent invoicing and documentation Business activity becomes difficult to prove. Issue invoices consistently and file them in one system.

Build your renewal packet (what to save, how to name it)

Renewal should not feel like a scavenger hunt. Your goal is a packet you could export quickly and share with an accountant or reviewer without apologizing. If you build the packet structure now, you will not dread the renewal later.

Use date-first naming for everything. It keeps two years of documents sortable and forces consistency. Example: 2026-03_BankStatement_BusinessAccount.pdf. If your folder does not sort cleanly, your renewal process will not be clean either.

Folder What goes in it What “good” looks like
01 IND Forms and IDs Residence card copy, passport copy, IND correspondence, and the relevant application form reference. Readable, current, complete.
02 Financial Statements Interim balance sheet and profit and loss statements for the current and previous financial year, prepared and verified by an authorised external expert. Include year-end package copies where available. Correct periods, professional format, and consistent with underlying records.
03 Bank Statements Monthly statement exports (PDF) for the full period. No gaps, business flows are readable, and deposits can be traced to invoices.
04 Invoices and Contracts Invoices issued, invoices received, and any core client agreements relevant to activity. Invoices are consistently numbered and saved as PDFs.
05 Business Proof KvK extracts and basic business identity documents. Current extract available and stored with date-first naming.
06 Cover Page A one-page factual summary: what you do, typical work, and how the packet is organized. Short, plain, and helps the reviewer verify quickly.

That cover page matters more than people think. Reviewers should not have to guess. If you make the verification easy, the process tends to go smoother.

Your minimum admin system (simple but sufficient)

You do not need perfect accounting. You need explainable accounting. Explainable means another professional can review your records and produce the statements the IND expects without spending hours untangling your life.

Habit Frequency Deliverable
Export bank statements as PDFs Monthly A complete set of statement exports, named and filed in order.
Store invoices issued and received Monthly Invoice PDFs in one folder, consistently numbered and searchable.
Document owner transfers clearly Every transfer Clean labels and consistent treatment, so flows are explainable.
Keep a single “DAFT Admin Binder” folder Always A predictable folder structure that can be zipped and shared.
Request interim statements before you need them Renewal cycle Interim balance sheet and profit and loss statements on time.

Record retention matters too. Business.gov.nl states you must keep business records for at least seven years (and longer in certain cases). That is normal compliance, not just a DAFT issue. If your system is digital, you also want to make sure files remain accessible in a usable format.

What to ask your accountant or bookkeeper

The IND treaty renewal evidence is only “hard” when you delay professional support until the last minute. If you use an accountant or bookkeeper, the goal is simple: get statements that match the IND expectations, on a timeline that protects you.

Four questions that save time and money

1) Can you produce interim statements? You need a balance sheet and profit and loss statement for the relevant current-year period, not only year-end outputs.

2) What exact periods do you need and what is your turnaround time? If their timeline is six weeks, you must start early.

3) What do you need from me to support the “capital maintained” presentation? Alignment up front prevents surprises after you pay.

4) How do you want documents delivered? Bank exports, invoice exports, receipts, software access, or all of the above. Clear inputs reduce cost.

If you want to control costs, do the boring part yourself. Keep business and personal flows separate. Store invoices consistently. Export statements monthly. Professionals get expensive when they are forced to reconstruct your timeline.

If you are behind, do this first

If you are reading this and realizing your admin is not clean, do not spiral. You can fix it. You just need order and prioritization.

Start by stopping the damage. Separate business and personal activity now. Then export all monthly bank statements for the full period. Then gather invoices issued and invoices received. Those three ingredients are the raw materials an accountant needs to produce coherent statements.

Fast recovery order: statement exports first, invoices second, then a short timeline note of major events (business launch date, big client periods, slow months), then professional conversion into interim statements.

This is also where overpriced “full service renewal” packages thrive. Your defense is clarity. You now know the IND wants professional statements and explicitly says a bank statement is not sufficient. If someone cannot explain deliverables and timelines in plain language, they are not solving your problem.

How we help without becoming a middleman

Most people do not need someone to “do DAFT for them.” They need a structured plan, a clean proof trail, and a second set of eyes so small admin mistakes do not become big renewal problems. You stay in control. We help you stay organized and confident.

Use the DAFT resources hub for the DIY guide, tools, and calculators. Use the DIY Companion if you want structured support while you handle the process yourself. Use financial advisory if your biggest stress is building a resilient money system across USD and EUR while you relocate.

DAFT resources hub: /portal/daft/

DAFT DIY guide: /portal/daft/diy-guide/

DAFT DIY Companion: /daft-diy-companion/

Financial advisory: /financial-advisory/

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Sources and official links

Always verify requirements with official sources before you submit.

lloydnapier
Author: lloydnapier

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