30 percent ruling
in the Netherlands
Need help or have any questions?
Contact our consultant Roy
Roy
Roy is consultant within Expat Service and helps answer any questions related to using the application and tax advice.
Need help or have any questions?
Contact our international tax advisor Roy
Roy
Roy is consultant within Expat Service and helps answer any questions related to using the application and tax advice.
Benefits of the 30% ruling
The 30% ruling allows employers to reimburse up to 30% of their employee’s wages as reimbursement for their costs of relocating to the Netherlands. The ruling therefore carries a benefit for both the employee as well as the employer. The employee can of course receive a large portion of their salary tax exempted and as the employer, you won’t have to pay the employer part of the social security premiums over this exempted part of the salary.
The 30%-ruling needs to be applied for, before it can be used. The employer and the employee, need to formally agree to apply for this ruling together. Once the application has been sent in, the authorities will review it and issue a statement in which they either grant or deny the 30%-ruling.
The first of these conditions is that the applicant was recruited by their Dutch employer, from outside of the Netherlands. The applicant must therefore, in the 2 years before they started working in the Netherlands, have lived more than 150 kilometers from the Dutch border, for at least 17 months.
The second condition is that the applicant must have a specific expertise. This specific expertise is measured with a salary criterion and in 2025 this criterion is set at € 46.660. This means that after the 30%-ruling has been applied, the applicant needs to have at least a taxable salary of this amount on an annual basis.
For applicants to the ruling, who are below 30 years of age and are in possession of a master’s degree, a lower criterion can be maintained. This criterion is set at € 35.468 in 2025. Keep in mind that these criteria change every year, to correct for inflation as well as changing work fields. If your employees have the 30%-ruling, but their salary in any given year falls below the criteria, then they will lose the 30%-ruling.
Conditions 30% ruling
Steve is consultant within Expat Service and helps answer any questions related to using the application and tax advice.
30% ruling application
In general, the 30%-ruling is a very beneficial but also extremely complicated facility. Navigating the different rules and stipulations regarding the different situations, can be especially tricky.
As experts in international tax law, and therefore the 30%-ruling, we aim to ease this process for all our clients, both employees and employers. Not only can we advise and clarify regarding aspects of the ruling, but we can also take care of the application process.
If you need any information or assistance regarding the 30%-ruling, please feel free to contact us and we will be able to help with any need you might have for our services.
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Application of the 30 percent ruling in the Netherlands
Once the ruling has been granted by the authorities, it must of course be applied properly. The application of the ruling is done within the wage tax administration. Since the wage tax runs on a monthly basis and the 30%-ruling has limits on an annual basis, it is very much possible to make a mistake or to cross one of the limits of the ruling. It is therefore vital that regular checks are made within the wage tax administration, to make sure that no employees that benefit form the ruling, are beyond the limits of this ruling.
As of 2024, the 30%-ruling has changed quite a bit. It is for example no longer possible to exempt 30% of the employees’ wages for the entirety of the ruling’s runtime. After the initial 20 months of the ruling, the maximum allowed exemption drops to 20% and in the last 20 months only 10% may be applied. This of course significantly decreases the benefit of the ruling for both employee and employer, during its runtime. Some employees may maintain the 30% for the entirety of their ruling, but only if they already had the ruling, before the changes went into effect. Please feel free to contact us if you have any questions, regarding these changes to the 30%-ruling and how to properly navigate them.
