The 30% ruling, explained

The short version

• Your employer can pay up to 30% of your salary without tax being deducted from it.
• Your employer applies, not you. You cannot file it yourself.
• The salary test is on what is left after the untaxed part comes off, not on your gross.
• Apply within 4 months of your first working day or you lose the months before approval.
• Researchers at designated facilities and trainee specialist doctors skip the salary test entirely.

If you moved to the Netherlands for work, the 30% ruling is probably the single largest thing standing between your gross salary and your bank account. It is also the one most people find out about too late, because it runs on your employer's paperwork rather than your own.

Here is what it is, whether you qualify, what it is worth on your salary, and the deadline that actually matters.

What the 30% ruling is

Moving countries costs money. The Dutch government's answer is the 30% facility, or 30%-regeling: a recognition that people recruited from abroad carry "extraterritorial costs" that a local hire does not.

Rather than making you itemise those costs, the scheme lets your employer pay a fixed share of your salary as a tax-free reimbursement. In 2026 that share is up to 30%.

Two things follow from that, and both surprise people.

First, it is not a discount on your tax rate. Your gross salary does not change. Part of it simply stops being treated as salary, which means the top slice of your income stops being taxed at your highest bracket. That is why the benefit is worth more the more you earn.

Second, it is your employer's scheme, applied through payroll. You are the beneficiary, not the applicant.

Who qualifies

Four conditions have to hold at once.

You were recruited or transferred from abroad. You cannot move to the Netherlands first, find a job locally, and then claim it.

You lived far enough away beforehand. 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. The 150 kilometres are measured in a straight line, not by road, so check it on a map rather than in a route planner. This rules out most people arriving from Belgium and western Germany.

Your salary clears the threshold. Your taxable salary must be at least €48,013. If you are under 30 and hold a Dutch master's degree or a recognised foreign equivalent, the threshold drops to €36,497.

Your employer is willing to apply. Most international employers do this routinely. Smaller Dutch companies sometimes have never done it before.

Two groups skip the salary test entirely: people conducting scientific research at a designated research facility, and doctors training to become a specialist. If that is you, no salary minimum applies at all. It is worth knowing, because academic salaries frequently sit under €48,013 and plenty of PhD candidates and postdocs assume that settles it.

That last point has a useful consequence. Your employer is allowed to apply a percentage lower than the maximum. If the full allowance would drop you under the threshold, a smaller one that keeps you exactly at it still works. You get less than the headline number, but you get something.

What it is worth

The honest answer is that it depends on your salary, and the relationship is not linear. Below the threshold it is worth nothing. Just above it, very little. Well above it, a great deal.

Run your own numbers

Open the full tool

Your gross annual salary

Before tax, excluding holiday allowance.

€

I am under 30 and hold a Dutch master's degree, or a recognised foreign equivalentA lower salary threshold applies.

What it is worth

€883

more per month, or €10,598 a year.

Net per month with the ruling

€4,970

Net per month without it

€4,087

Untaxed allowance

€21,000

Taxable salary

€49,000

Threshold that applies to you

€48,013

From 2027 the maximum drops to 27%. On this salary that is about €795 per month instead, holding 2026 thresholds constant. Anyone who became eligible before 2024 keeps 30% for the rest of their term.

Show the calculation

With the ruling

Gross salary

€70,000.00

Untaxed allowance

- €21,000.00

Taxable salary

€49,000.00

Tax on €38,883.00 at 35.75%

€13,900.67

Tax on €10,117.00 at 37.56%

€3,799.95

Income tax and national insurance

€17,700.62

General tax credit

- €1,882.49

Labour tax credit

- €5,463.14

Tax payable

€10,354.99

Net from taxable salary

€38,645.01

Plus untaxed allowance

+ €21,000.00

Net per year

€59,645.01

Net per month

€4,970.42

Without the ruling

Gross salary

€70,000.00

Taxable salary

€70,000.00

Tax on €38,883.00 at 35.75%

€13,900.67

Tax on €31,117.00 at 37.56%

€11,687.55

Income tax and national insurance

€25,588.22

General tax credit

- €538.91

Labour tax credit

- €4,096.04

Tax payable

€20,953.27

Net per year

€49,046.73

Net per month

€4,087.23

Difference per year

€10,598.28

Difference per month

€883.19

An indicative estimate, not tax advice. It assumes employment income only, below state pension age, with no pension contribution or other deductions. Your employer applies for this, not you. Check your situation against Belastingdienst.

Two limits shape the top end. Salary above €262,000 is fully taxable, which caps the untaxed allowance at €78,600 a year. And the ruling runs for a maximum of 5 years.

The calculation, worked through

Take a gross salary of €70,000. Rather than asking you to trust the number, here is every step.

30% comes off the top as an untaxed allowance. What remains is taxed as normal income: box 1 rates apply bracket by bracket, then the general tax credit and the labour tax credit come off the tax owed. Both credits shrink as income rises, which is why the version without the ruling loses more of them.

The untaxed allowance is then added back, because you still receive it. It simply never passed through tax.

The same salary, taxed two ways. The gap is what the ruling is worth. Note that the credits differ between the two columns even though the gross is identical: lowering your taxable income keeps more of both.

How to apply

You and your employer complete the application together and send it to the Belastingdienst. In practice this means your employer's payroll provider or HR team drives it, and you supply documents: your passport, your employment contract, proof of where you lived before, and your degree certificate if you are claiming the lower threshold.

The deadline is the part worth setting a reminder for. Apply within 4 months of your first working day and the ruling applies retroactively to that day. Miss it, and it only starts from the first day of the month after your application succeeds. Those lost months do not come back, and they are not added to the end of your term.

The Belastingdienst then decides within 8 weeks. Until the decision arrives your payslip looks ordinary, so a normal-looking first month or two is not a sign anything went wrong.

What happens when you change jobs

The ruling belongs to the employment relationship, not to you. When you move to a new employer it does not follow automatically. Your new employer has to apply again, and there are limits on how long a gap between jobs you can have before the entitlement lapses.

The remaining term carries over rather than resetting, so a job change partway through does not buy you a fresh five years. Confirm the current gap rules with the Belastingdienst before you resign, not after.

What is changing

From 1 January 2027 the maximum drops from 30% to 27%.

There is a transitional rule. If you became eligible before 1 January 2024, you keep the full 30% for the rest of your term. If you started after that, you get 30% up to the end of 2026 and 27% from then on.

Anyone in that second group also faces a higher salary threshold from 2027, on top of the usual annual indexation. Figures are circulating, but they are quoted at an older price level and have not been indexed yet, so there is no final number to plan against. Check the Belastingdienst rather than budgeting on a figure you read somewhere.

One part of the scheme has already gone. Users could previously opt to be treated as a partial non-resident taxpayer, which kept certain foreign assets outside the Dutch tax net. That option ended with the 2025 return. If you first held the ruling before 2024, transitional law lets you keep it through your 2026 return. If you were counting on it, that is a conversation for a tax advisor rather than a guide.

Four mistakes that cost people money

Waiting for HR to bring it up. Plenty of employers handle this without being asked. Plenty do not. The cost of asking is one email.

Estimating on gross salary. Every "am I eligible" guess that tests the threshold against gross rather than post-allowance salary comes out wrong, and usually optimistically.

Assuming a job change is neutral. A gap between contracts can end the entitlement entirely.

Treating the deadline as soft. It is the one date in this process with an irreversible consequence.

Tax advisors who work in English

B

Blue Umbrella

English-speaking tax service for internationals. Specializes in 30% ruling and expat situations.

J

J.C. Suurmond

Established Dutch tax consultancy with a strong international practice. Good for complex situations with multiple income sources.