Net salary indication and 30% rule, contractor question

Hi and welcome to the Dutch Forum.

To qualify for the 30% tax rule, you must be in receipt of an annual salary above a specific amount - the latest rate I have is circa € 37k; however, because of the way the scheme is applied, you really need to earn in the region of €57,000 to get the full 30% benefit.  Put simply, you only pay Dutch tax on 70% of your income; you can claim this allowance for a maximum of 5-years.

One other requirement is that you must be an employee, so a contractor would not qualify for the 30% rule.

There is another website that goes into greater detail regarding the rules; this link will take you there.

Hope this helps.

Cynic
Expat Team

Hi Cynic,

yes, I know these things. Those would not be a problem. What I don't know is how this would come into play when providing a net salary wish.

And if not what it means to be a contractor in the Netherlands and what the actual advantages are. After all, setting up a BV costs a lot of money, I'd need an accountant, a business (mailbox) address for which I'd need to pay, etc.

I have the feeling that providing one salary wish is not sufficient here.

Hi and welcome back.

With regards to net salary; perhaps I'm oversimplifying things, but they're asking you how much you wish to be paid net of deductions.  You start to benefit from the 30% rule once you qualify and agree etc and earn in excess of €37.1k, up to a ceiling of €53k, where you would start paying tax on any salary over that.  I have no idea what you do, so can't even guess what ceiling you are looking at, or even what your peers are earning, but things like "Glassdoor" can help you there.  The 30% rule applies to salary only, not any benefits you can negotiate (healthcare, holiday pay etc) for which you will pay tax at the normal rate, so it's worthwhile considering the true worth of any benefits being offered.  You say you "know these things", so I'll assume you are also aware of Dutch social taxes, which are also not part of the 30% rules?

With regards to setting up a business in Holland and the related costs; I've never done it, but I don't think you can be regarded as a Contractor (or ZZP as they call it) if you work for one company, they (the Belastingdienst, or taxman) will regard you as an employee and tax you accordingly.  If you're seriously considering this, then I'd recommend you speak to the Kamer van Koophandel for some advice; it's not really what this Forum does.  You can access the KvK website from this link; I just checked it out and while they used to have an English version, this appears to no longer be the case - assuming you don't speak any Dutch, I just tried it with Google translate which works down to a certain level, but some parts display the text as something that Google doesn't recognise.  Anyway, their phone numbers are pretty obvious and I'm sure they will speak English if you phone them.

If you have any further specific questions, please come back to me.

Hope this helps.

Cynic
Expat Team

Hi Cynic,
thanks a lot. This really helps I talked to belastingdienst and KvK yesterday with regards to contractor type employment, but am none the wiser to be honest. In my industry, and lots of others, e.g. IT those contractor jobs seem to be fairly common in the Netherlands. I just can't find out what it actually means and I don't know anyone working this way in NL. I guess I need to wade through my linkedin connections again to see if I missed someone.

Not sure if you've already seen this site.  Scroll down to the bottom and some links to some individual histories appear, plus a link to their Facebook page.