The Supreme Court confirmed in its ruling of 10 July 2015 that trading parties may contractually deviate from the graduated scale in accordance with the Collection Costs Act. You may therefore contractually stipulate in your general terms and conditions that your claim will be increased by, for example, 15% collection costs if your debtor fails to meet its payment obligations on time.
Are contracted collection costs eligible for reimbursement?
However, these contractual extrajudicial collection costs may be moderated by the court. According to the Supreme Court, whether and in what way may be moderated by a court must be assessed on a case-by-case basis. This means that lower courts have a wide discretion and it may differ from case to case whether the contracted collection costs are eligible for compensation.
The starting point in the assessment remains that the costs must be reasonable for the debtor. Whether those costs are reasonable can be determined on the basis of all kinds of circumstances, such as: your debtor himself also uses a certain collection percentage in his general terms and conditions, you pay your lawyer a certain fee for successful collection, the claimed collection percentage is common in the industry you work in, etc.
Keep making agreements with your debtor
In order to recover your collection costs from your debtor, it remains important to make agreements on this with your debtor. This can be done by including a collection percentage in your general terms and conditions. If you have not arranged anything, you will fall back on the graduated scale of the Collection Costs Act, which means that in most cases you will have to bear part of the costs yourself.
The Supreme Court ruling is expected to receive further elaboration in the lower courts. We will keep you informed.
Text Supreme Court ruling Supreme Court BGK 15072015. Source: Bierens Debt Collection Lawyers.
