Two people on the same €100,000 salary in Amsterdam can pay €13,844 a year apart in tax, and the only difference between them is a sheet of paper filed within four months of the first working day. The Netherlands 30% ruling — renamed the expatregeling in the Belastingdienst's own 2026 figures — lets an employer designate up to 30% of your pay as a tax-free reimbursement of the costs of living outside your home country, which at the top Dutch marginal rate of 49.50% is the largest single lever available to anyone moving here on a payroll. In 2026 it is still worth 30%. In 2027 it is worth 27%, three different groups of users land in three different places, and one of its best features disappears entirely.
We read this out of the statute and the published figures rather than the advisory blogs, because the blogs disagree with each other on every transitional detail: article 31a(8) of the Wage Tax Act 1964 in both its 2026 and 2027 versions, the Belastingdienst's annex of 2026 payroll amounts, the Staatscourant notice that sets the 2027 top-income norm, and Rijksoverheid's own table of who keeps what. Every figure below carries the document it came from, and we ran the arithmetic ourselves at six salary points.
Key takeaways
- 2026 figures, from the Belastingdienst's annex: 30.00%, a salary norm of €48,013 (€36,497 if under 30 with an academic master's), and a ceiling of €262,000. Maximum tax-free: €78,600.
- You need €68,590 gross to use the full 30%. The norm is tested on what stays taxable, so €48,013 ÷ 0.70 is the floor. Below it, the allowance shrinks to whatever keeps taxable pay at €48,013.
- The 2027 cut is three changes, not one. Pre-2024 starters keep 30%; 2024 starters drop to 27% on the old norm; 2025-and-later starters get 27% and the higher €50,436 norm.
- At the ceiling the cut is 6.2%, not 10%. €78,600 falls to €73,710, because the norm itself rises from €262,000 to €273,000 on the same day.
- 2026 is the last year of partial non-resident status. Article 2.6 of the Income Tax Act 2001 is already repealed; the transitional for the December 2023 group runs out with this calendar year, and Box 3 at 36% arrives in 2027.
Wise — the ruling pays out in euros on a Dutch payroll while the clients or shareholders funding that payroll are often billed in dollars or pounds, and the conversion spread is the line nobody models
The 2026 numbers, straight from the Belastingdienst annex
The figures that decide whether you qualify are published once a year in the annex to the Belastingdienst's payroll newsletter, and they are the only version that matters. For 2026 the annex lists the expatregeling at 30.00%, a salary norm of €48,013.00 for an employee with specific expertise, €36,497.00 for such an employee who is not yet 30, and an aftopping — a ceiling — at the Wet normering topinkomens norm of €262,000.00.
The detail that trips people up is where the norm is measured. It applies to taxable salary, which is what is left after the allowance has been carved out. So the useful number is not €48,013 but €68,590: divide €48,013 by 0.70 and you have the lowest gross salary that still supports a full 30% designation. Earn less than that and your employer can still apply the ruling, but only on the slice that keeps taxable pay at €48,013 — at €60,000 gross, the allowance is €11,987, not €18,000.
| 2026 parameter | Value | Where it comes from |
|---|---|---|
| Maximum designated share | 30.00% | Belastingdienst 2026 amounts annex |
| Salary norm (taxable) | €48,013.00 | Belastingdienst 2026 amounts annex |
| Salary norm, under 30 with academic master's | €36,497.00 | Belastingdienst 2026 amounts annex |
| Ceiling on pay the share applies to | €262,000.00 | WNT art. 2.3 norm, via the same annex |
| Maximum tax-free amount | €78,600 | 30% × €262,000 |
| Gross needed for a full 30% designation | €68,590 | €48,013 ÷ 0.70 |
| Maximum duration | 5 years | Art. 31a(8) Wage Tax Act 1964 |
| Application deadline | 4 months from first working day | Business.gov.nl |
Two conditions sit outside the arithmetic. You must have lived more than 150 kilometres from the Dutch border for more than 16 of the 24 months before your first working day here, which quietly excludes most of Belgium, a strip of western Germany, Luxembourg and parts of northern France. And the application is the employer's to file, within four months of day one, or the ruling starts late and you lose the months before it.
What the Netherlands 30% ruling is worth in euros
Almost nobody writing about this scheme puts a number on it, which is odd, because the number is the whole point. The allowance comes off the top of your pay, so it displaces income at your highest marginal rate. The 2026 payroll brackets are 35.75% up to €38,883, 37.56% from there to €78,426, and 49.50% above that.
Below is the same calculation at six salary points, for 2026 at 30% and for 2027 at 27%. To isolate the effect of the rate change we hold the brackets constant at their 2026 values — the 2027 brackets are not published yet — and we ignore tax credits, which taper in ways that depend on your personal situation. Treat these as the gross arithmetic of the designation, not as a payslip.
| Gross salary | 2026 allowance | Taxable | Tax saved 2026 | 2027 allowance | Tax saved 2027 | Change |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| €68,590 | €20,577 | €48,013 | €7,729 | €18,154 | €6,819 | −€910 |
| €80,000 | €24,000 | €56,000 | €9,202 | €21,600 | €8,301 | −€901 |
| €100,000 | €30,000 | €70,000 | €13,844 | €27,000 | €12,717 | −€1,127 |
| €150,000 | €45,000 | €105,000 | €22,275 | €40,500 | €20,048 | −€2,228 |
| €262,000 | €78,600 | €183,400 | €38,907 | €70,740 | €35,016 | −€3,891 |
| €300,000 | €78,600 | €221,400 | €38,907 | €73,710 | €36,486 | −€2,421 |
A €100,000 earner pays an effective 25.6% instead of 39.4% — and over a full five-year term that is €69,220 of tax not paid. At €150,000 the five-year figure is €111,375. These are the numbers that make Dutch packages competitive with German or Belgian ones despite a 49.50% top rate, and they are also the numbers that make the 2027 change worth planning around rather than shrugging at: the same €150,000 earner starting in 2027 collects €11,138 less over five years than one who started in 2025.
Notice what happens at €300,000. The allowance stops growing at €78,600 because the ceiling binds, so every euro above €262,000 is taxed at the full 49.50%. Past that point the ruling is a fixed subsidy, not a percentage one.
2027 is three changes, and the blogs get this wrong
The headline is simple: from 1 January 2027 the maximum falls to 27%. The 2027 text of article 31a(8) replaces 30% with 27% in both places the number appears — the share of pay that may be designated, and the ceiling expressed as a percentage of the top-income norm. Article 31a(9), covering employees posted abroad, moves the same way.
What is not simple is who it applies to, and this is where the advisory pages contradict one another: some say the cut spares anyone who started before 2024, others that it spares only those who started in 2023, others that it catches 2024 starters in full. Rijksoverheid publishes the answer as a three-row table, and it has three rows because the percentage and the salary norm move independently.
| Scheme started | Rate in 2026 | Rate from 2027 | Salary norm from 2027 |
|---|---|---|---|
| On or before 31 December 2023 | 30% | 30%, for the rest of the five-year term | Existing norm |
| During 2024 | 30% | 27% | Existing norm |
| On or after 1 January 2025 | 30% | 27% | New, higher norm |
The new norm is €50,436, with €38,388 for the under-30 academic master's route, per the government's own business portal — which frames both as increases on the 2024 base figures of €46,107 and €35,048. Those amounts are still subject to annual indexation, and the definitive 2027 figures are published at the end of 2026, so treat them as the statutory starting point rather than the final number.
The practical consequence for anyone deciding when to take a Dutch job: a start date in 2026 rather than 2027 does not buy you 30% for five years. It buys you 30% for one year, then 27% with the lower norm. Only a start date on or before 31 December 2023 — which is to say, only history — buys the full term at 30%.
At the ceiling, the cut is 6.2% rather than 10%
Thirty to twenty-seven looks like a 10% reduction, and for most salaries it is. At the ceiling it is not, because the ceiling moves on the same day.
The Wet normering topinkomens norm is re-set every January by ministerial regulation, indexed to public-sector contract wage growth and rounded up to the nearest thousand. The notice published in the Staatscourant on 24 August 2026 replaces €262,000 with €273,000 in article 2.3(1) with effect from 1 January 2027. Because article 31a(8) expresses the ceiling as a percentage of that figure, the maximum tax-free amount goes from 30% of €262,000 to 27% of €273,000:
| Year | Rate | Top-income norm | Maximum tax-free |
|---|---|---|---|
| 2026 | 30% | €262,000 | €78,600 |
| 2027 | 27% | €273,000 | €73,710 |
That is €4,890 less, a 6.2% reduction rather than 10%, because 4.2% of indexation absorbs part of the cut. For a high earner it also means the ceiling now binds at a higher salary: €262,000 in 2026, €273,000 in 2027. Nobody at the top of this scheme should be budgeting a 10% haircut, and anybody modelling it off the rate alone is wrong by about €2,400 a year.
2026 is the last year of partial non-resident status
The 30% ruling has always had a second half that gets far less attention than the headline percentage, and it is the half that actually mattered to founders and investors. Alongside the tax-free allowance, holders could elect to be treated as a partial non-resident taxpayer: Dutch-resident for your employment income, foreign for your Box 2 and Box 3 income. Dutch shareholdings and most Dutch-taxable savings and investments simply fell out of the net.
That provision is article 2.6 of the Income Tax Act 2001, and the statute now records it with four words: Vervallen per 01-01-2025 — lapsed as of 1 January 2025. A transitional arrangement preserves the choice for the group who had the ruling applied in the December 2023 payroll, and it runs through 2025 and 2026. From 1 January 2027 nobody has it.
What arrives instead is ordinary Dutch resident taxation of the other two boxes, at 2026 rates:
| Box | What it covers | 2026 rate |
|---|---|---|
| 2 | Income from a substantial shareholding (5%+) | 24.5% up to €68,843, then 31% |
| 3 | Savings and investments | 36% |
If you are in the transitional group, 2026 is your last filing year with Box 3 out of scope, and the decisions that follow from that — whether to realise a dividend from your BV while Box 2 is still outside the net, how an offshore portfolio looks once Box 3 applies at 36% — are decisions with a deadline of 31 December. Our guide to the Schengen 90/180 rule covers the presence arithmetic if the answer involves spending less time here; it does not, by itself, change your residence.
The ceiling now catches everyone, including pre-2023 hires
One 2026 change has already happened and is still missing from most write-ups. The ceiling on the pay the designation applies to was introduced from 1 January 2024, but with a transitional arrangement: employees who were already using the scheme before 1 January 2023 were exempt from it. That exemption expired, and Rijksoverheid states plainly that the top-salary limit applies to all expats from 1 January 2026.
If you are a long-standing user earning well above €262,000, your allowance was uncapped in 2025 and is capped at €78,600 this year. Nothing about your ruling changed and nobody needed to tell you; the transitional simply ran out. It is worth checking your January payslip against your December one, because this is the kind of change that shows up as a smaller net without an explanation attached.
If you are your own employer, read this twice
Most of Soveraine's readers are not being relocated by a multinational. They are freelancers and founders, and for them the ruling has a hard structural boundary that the employer-facing guides never state.
The scheme is a payroll facility. Article 31a(8) deals with employees "taken into employment from outside the Netherlands by a withholding agent", and it works by reclassifying part of wages as a tax-free expense reimbursement. If there is no employment and no withholding agent, there is nothing for it to attach to. That rules out, categorically: a sole trader on a DAFT visa, a Dutch eenmanszaak, a zzp contractor invoicing clients, and anyone running income through a foreign company without a Dutch payroll. The same logic excludes a German freelance permit holder commuting into Dutch work — the permit is for freiberufliche activity, not employment.
A director on their own BV's payroll is a different case: that is a genuine employment relationship with a Dutch withholding agent, and the statute does not exclude shareholders. What it does require is that you were taken into employment from outside the Netherlands. The settled reading of that condition, as payroll specialists SD Worx summarise the Supreme Court criteria, is that you must have entered the employment contract while living outside the Netherlands and not already working here. Incorporate a BV after you have moved, hire yourself, and you fail it — not on a technicality, but because you were not recruited from abroad at all.
So the sequencing is the whole game, and it is the opposite of what most people do. The ruling has to be arranged before the move, by an entity that already exists and that can be a withholding agent. An employer files the application; the inspector decides by a written decision that is open to objection. If you are planning to put yourself on a Dutch payroll, that is a conversation with a Dutch adviser before you book the flight, not after. If the answer is that you cannot get there, the comparison set is the self-employment and remote-work permits across Europe, several of which ask for clients rather than an employer.
What the ruling quietly costs you
An allowance that reduces your taxable wage reduces it for every other purpose that reads your taxable wage, and three of those matter.
Your pension accrual shrinks. Dutch occupational pensions are built on pensionable salary, and 30% of your pay is no longer salary. Over a five-year term on €100,000 that is €150,000 of pay that accrues nothing, unless your scheme's rules say otherwise.
Your social insurance base shrinks. Unemployment and disability benefits are calculated on the taxable wage. Someone on €100,000 with the ruling has the benefit entitlement of someone on €70,000.
Your mortgage capacity shrinks. Dutch lenders generally underwrite against taxable income, and a €70,000 taxable salary borrows like a €70,000 salary, whatever your bank statements show. Some lenders treat the allowance as income; many do not, and the ones that do often cap it at the remaining years of the ruling.
None of this makes the ruling a bad deal — €13,844 a year is a large number to turn down — but it does mean the honest comparison is against your net position over a decade, not your net pay next month.
Wise — if the Dutch payroll paying your 30% allowance is funded by invoices in dollars, pounds or anything else, holding both currencies in one account keeps the salary you promised yourself and the money that actually lands in the same ballpark
Who the Netherlands 30% ruling is wrong for
- Anyone already living in the Netherlands. The recruitment-from-abroad condition and the 150 km test are both backward-looking. Once you are here, the door is shut.
- Freelancers and sole traders. No payroll, no ruling. The DAFT and the Dutch eenmanszaak get you residence and nothing from this scheme.
- People just under the floor. Below €68,590 gross you get a partial allowance, and below €48,013 taxable you get none at all. A nominal "30% ruling" job at €55,000 is a €6,987 allowance.
- Cross-border commuters from Belgium, Luxembourg or the German border region. The 150 km rule was written for you, and the CJEU has already upheld it.
- Anyone optimising for the 2030s. Five years is the maximum, there is no renewal, and the rate you start on is the rate you are likely to keep. If the plan is a permanent low-tax base rather than a five-year run, the zero and near-zero tax residencies are a different conversation.
Related reading
- DAFT visa Netherlands — the €4,500 treaty route into the same country, for the self-employed who cannot touch this scheme.
- Germany freelance visa — the neighbouring self-employment permit, and the residency clock it costs you.
- Digital nomad visas — the remote-work and self-employment routes across Europe, with their income thresholds.
- Digital nomad visa to permanent residency — which routes convert into a permanent permit, and after how long.
- Multi-currency accounts — funding a euro payroll from revenue invoiced in another currency.
- US LLC permanent establishment — what happens to a US LLC once you manage it from a Dutch desk.
FAQ
What is the salary norm for the 30% ruling in 2026?
€48,013 of taxable salary, or €36,497 if the employee is under 30 with a recognised academic master's degree. Both figures come from the Belastingdienst's own annex of 2026 payroll amounts. The norm is measured on what remains taxable after the allowance is carved out, so to use the full 30% you need gross pay of at least €68,590 — €48,013 divided by 0.70.
How much is the Netherlands 30% ruling actually worth?
On a €100,000 gross salary in 2026, the allowance is €30,000 and the payroll tax falls from €39,432 to €25,588 — a saving of €13,844 a year, before any tax credits. At the €262,000 ceiling the saving is €38,907. At €68,590, the lowest gross that supports the full 30%, it is €7,729. The ruling is worth more the higher your salary, because the allowance comes off the top of your pay at the 49.50% marginal rate.
Is the 30% ruling becoming 27%?
Yes, from 1 January 2027. The 2027 text of article 31a(8) of the Wage Tax Act 1964 replaces 30% with 27% in both places it appears — the share of pay you may designate, and the ceiling expressed as a percentage of the top-income norm. The 2026 rate is still 30%.
Who keeps the 30% rate after 2027?
Employees who started using the scheme on or before 31 December 2023. Rijksoverheid's own table gives them 30% and the existing salary norm for the remainder of their five-year term. Those who started during 2024 move to 27% in 2027 but keep the old norm; those who started on or after 1 January 2025 get 27% and the higher 2027 norm.
Can a freelancer or sole trader use the 30% ruling?
No. Article 31a(8) of the Wage Tax Act applies to employees taken into employment from outside the Netherlands by a Dutch withholding agent, and it operates through payroll. A sole trader on a DAFT permit, a Dutch eenmanszaak or a zzp contract has no employer and no payroll, so there is nothing for the ruling to attach to. A director on their own BV's payroll is an employee, but still has to satisfy the recruitment-from-abroad test.
What is the maximum tax-free amount under the ruling in 2026?
€78,600 — 30% of the €262,000 top-income norm. From 1 January 2026 this ceiling applies to every user of the scheme; the transitional arrangement that exempted employees hired before 1 January 2023 has ended. In 2027 the ceiling becomes 27% of €273,000, or €73,710.
What happens to partial non-resident taxpayer status in 2027?
It ends. Article 2.6 of the Income Tax Act 2001, the provision that let ruling-holders be taxed as non-residents on their Box 2 and Box 3 income, is recorded in the statute as repealed with effect from 1 January 2025. A transitional arrangement lets the group who had the ruling applied in the December 2023 payroll keep using the choice in 2025 and 2026, so 2026 is the last year anyone can claim it.
Is this tax or immigration advice?
No. This is editorial research from primary Dutch sources, and Soveraine sells no tax, payroll or immigration services. Whether the ruling applies to you is decided by the inspector on a written application, and the decision is open to objection. Take Dutch advice before you structure anything around it.
Sources
- Wet op de loonbelasting 1964, art. 31a — version in force 1 January 2026 — subsection 8: employees "van buiten Nederland in dienstbetrekking genomen", "gedurende ten hoogste vijf jaar", "ten hoogste 30%", and the ceiling set at 30% of the maximum remuneration in art. 2.3 of the Wet normering topinkomens.
- Wet op de loonbelasting 1964, art. 31a — version in force 1 January 2027 — the same subsection with 27% in both places, and subsection 9 at 27% for posted employees.
- Belastingdienst — Tarieven, bedragen en percentages loonheffingen vanaf 1 januari 2026 — the expatregeling at 30.00%, the €48,013.00 and €36,497.00 salary norms, the €262,000.00 aftopping, and the 35.75% / 37.56% / 49.50% payroll brackets at €38,883 and €78,426.
- Rijksoverheid — Expatregeling hoogopgeleide buitenlandse werknemers — "In 2025 en 2026 blijft de belastingvrije vergoeding maximaal 30%", "Vanaf 2027 wordt dit verlaagd naar maximaal 27%", the three-row transitional table by start year, and the ceiling applying to all expats from 1 January 2026.
- Ondernemersplein (overheid.nl) — Vergoeding 30%-regeling expats wordt 27% — the 2027 salary norms of €50,436 and €38,388 against the 2024 base figures of €46,107 and €35,048.
- Staatscourant 2026 nr. 29611, 24 August 2026 — article I replaces "€ 262.000" with "€ 273.000" in art. 2.3(1) WNT with effect from 1 January 2027.
- Wet inkomstenbelasting 2001 — version in force 1 January 2026 — art. 2.6 "Keuzerecht voor in het buitenland geworven deskundigen" marked Vervallen per 01-01-2025; art. 2.12 Box 2 at 24.5% to €68,843 then 31%; art. 2.13 Box 3 at 36%.
- Business.gov.nl — The expat scheme (30% ruling) for foreign employees — the 150 km / 16-of-24-months condition, the four-month application deadline, the five-year maximum, and the scarce-expertise requirement.
- SD Worx — Gebruik van de 30%-regeling voor ingekomen werknemers — the Supreme Court criteria for aanwerving: the employee enters the employment contract while living outside the Netherlands and is not already working here.