Vintro Pro
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Vintro Pro
NL · FR · EN
Belgium, the Netherlands, France and the UK each ask something different of your stock records. This page covers all four, the UK included, where HMRC runs a margin scheme of its own.
A list of what you have in stock is not yet stock administration.
Anyone selling second-hand ends up writing something down. A notebook, a spreadsheet, a folder of photos on a phone. That works — until someone asks what you paid for that one piece, and when.
What many dealers do not realise: that question does not only come from the accountant. In Belgium your margin scheme depends on it. In the Netherlands and France it is a separate legal duty, with its own name and its own rules. And in the UK your margin scheme depends on it just as much as it does in Belgium.
The Belgian margin scheme for second-hand goods, works of art, collectors' items and antiques sits in Royal Decree no. 53 of 23 December 1994. That decree does not only give you a calculation method — it also fixes what you have to keep.
There are three, and each does something different:
Every item you want to sell under the margin scheme must appear here. It has to be kept in a way that lets the goods be checked, and it has to line up with your periodic VAT return.
Its counterpart. Without the two together the profit margin cannot be established — and that is exactly the amount you pay VAT on.
The register that ties purchase and sale together. This is the part that costs the most time by hand, and where a spreadsheet falls apart first.
No registers, no margin scheme. You fall back on the normal scheme — VAT on the full selling price instead of on your margin.
One more duty comes with it, unrelated to the list itself: your invoice has to state that this is a margin sale, with the note that the VAT is not deductible.
Source: Royal Decree no. 53 of 23 December 1994, as explained by the Belgian FPS Finance. Checked on 30 August 2026. This is an explanation, not tax advice — put your own situation to your accountant.
Selling to or buying from the Netherlands, you meet something else. There it is not about VAT but about handling stolen goods: anyone dealing professionally in second-hand goods must register and keep an opkopersregister — nowadays digital, the DOR.
What goes in is concrete: the purchase date, a description of the object, and the cost price. Buying from a private person adds the seller's details. Police and enforcement officers check whether you are registered; if you are not, a fine follows.
So it is a different list from the Belgian one, with a different purpose — but in practice it asks for largely the same data.
In France it is called a registre d'objets mobiliers, known in everyday speech as the livre de police. Anyone selling second-hand professionally — brocanteur, antiques dealer, consignment shop — has to keep one.
The requirements are stricter than elsewhere, and strict in an old-fashioned way: the nature and characteristics of the object, its origin, the method of payment, plus the surname, first name and address of whoever sold it to you. In indelible ink, with no blanks, no crossings-out and no abbreviations. Kept for five years after closing.
Three countries, three names, three purposes — and yet they largely ask for the same piece of information.
Since Brexit the UK has been a separate VAT territory with a margin scheme of its own. HMRC prescribes no particular form — a stock book is not compulsory, keeping stock records is. If you cannot establish your margin, VAT falls due on the full selling price.
What HMRC asks per item is the longest list of the four. And the striking part: purchase and sale sit in the same row.
| On purchase | stock number in numerical sequence · date of purchase · purchase invoice number · purchase price · name of seller · description of the item |
| On sale | date of sale · sales invoice number · selling price or method of disposal · name of buyer · the margin · the VAT due (one sixth) |
That last part is exactly what the Belgian comparison register does by hand. The UK simply asks for it in the same line from the start.
Records are kept for six years. If an item sits in stock for longer than six years, you keep its data until you have sold it.
Source: gov.uk, VAT margin schemes — Keeping records. Checked on 30 August 2026. Note: VAT Notice 718 is still widely quoted online, but HMRC has withdrawn it.
Put the four side by side and a hard core remains. This is what you must be able to show per item, whatever happens:
| When you bought it | all four |
| What it is, recognisably described | all four |
| What you paid for it | all four |
| Who you bought it from | NL, FR and UK |
| What it sold for | BE and UK |
| The link between purchase and sale | BE and UK |
| Who you sold it to | UK |
| The purchase and sales invoice numbers | UK |
If you trade in two of the four countries, you are better off keeping the strictest version from the start. Adding data afterwards to items you have already sold is no longer possible.
Four countries, four periods. This is the figure you need most often and the one that sits nowhere side by side:
and longer for as long as the piece is unsold
VAT records, article 60 of the VAT Code
VAT records; 10 years for immovable property
after the register is closed
The clock does not start at the same moment everywhere either. In the Netherlands it only runs once the data loses its current relevance; in France, from the closing of the register. Put your own situation to your accountant.
A spreadsheet can do all of this. The problem is not what it can do, but what happens as the stock grows.
Where exactly that line falls depends on how many pieces you hold and how unique they are — and the honest answer is that a spreadsheet often is enough, up to a point. When Excel is enough, and where it tips over.
The description sits in column C, the photo in a folder on your phone. During an inspection — or facing a customer asking which piece that was — you have to bring two things together.
The temptation is to delete a row the moment something sells. That is exactly when the retention duty starts: five years in France, and in Belgium you need that row to prove your margin.
Tying purchase to sale, item by item, period by period. Precisely the kind of work that waits until the accountant asks for it.
A missing purchase price throws no error. You only see it when you need it, and by then the piece is gone.
Vintro Pro is built around the idea that every piece has an identity of its own. Not a row in a list, but a record with everything attached to it: photos, purchase date, purchase price, origin, location, and later the selling price and date.
That way the stock list stops being a separate chore. It comes into being while you work:
You can also follow it step by step: adding a first item shows which fields to fill in straight away and which can wait.
The difference is not that you have to keep less. It is that you only type it once.
Vintro Pro keeps purchase price, sale price, photos and location together per piece — your stock list builds itself while you work.
In the UK a stock book is not compulsory, but keeping stock records is: without them HMRC cannot check your margin, and VAT falls due on the full selling price. In Belgium the margin scheme itself depends on three registers, set out in Royal Decree no. 53 of 23 December 1994. This page covers the UK, Belgium, the Netherlands and France.
On purchase: a stock number in numerical sequence, the date of purchase, the purchase invoice number, the purchase price, the name of the seller and a description. On sale: the date, the sales invoice number, the selling price or method of disposal, the name of the buyer, the margin and the VAT due. Purchase and sale sit in the same row.
A purchase register listing every item you want to sell under the margin scheme, a sales register for what goes out, and a comparison register tying purchase and sale together. Together they make the profit margin possible to establish.
The purchase date, a recognisable description and the purchase price. In the UK, the Netherlands and France the seller's details are added; in the UK and Belgium also the selling price and the link between purchase and sale.
Six years in the UK — and longer than that for any item you have not sold yet. Five years in France, counted from when the register is closed. In Belgium you need the data for as long as you must be able to prove your margin, so deleting a sold item is not a good idea.
No particular form is prescribed by law, so in principle yes. In practice it trips on three things: the photos live elsewhere, sold items get deleted, and the comparison register stays handwork.