Netherlands 30% Ruling Calculator

The legal test is on your TAXABLE salary after the 30% deduction, not your gross salary: at least €48,013/year taxable for the standard tier, or €36,497/year taxable if you're under 30 with a qualifying Dutch or recognised foreign Master's degree. Working backwards, that's roughly €68,590/year gross for the standard tier, or €52,139/year gross for the under-30 Master's tier.

It genuinely feels backwards the first time you see it: the ruling that makes 30% of your salary tax-free is also the thing that shrinks the number used to test whether you qualify for it in the first place. The Belastingdienst designed it this way to stop employers from inflating a headline gross figure purely to clear the bar while paying most of it out tax-free. The practical effect is that you need meaningfully more gross salary than the taxable threshold alone suggests, roughly taxable ÷ 0.70, which catches people who assume the taxable figure is the number they need to hit on their payslip.

It makes 30% of your gross salary tax-free (Box 1), taxing the remaining 70% at normal rates. On a €75,000 standard-tier salary that's €22,500 sheltered from tax, worth roughly €704/month (€8,451/year, a 17.8% increase in net pay) versus standard taxation on the same salary. Because it lowers taxable income rather than just the rate, the cash value grows at higher salaries, where more income would otherwise sit in the 49.50% top band.

For anyone whose ruling starts in 2026, it's a flat 30% for the full 5-year (60-month) term. The 2024 Tax Plan originally legislated a 30-20-10 step-down (30% for ~20 months, then 20%, then 10%), but Parliament reversed that in 2025. From 1 January 2027 the flat rate itself drops to 27% for new and ongoing rulings, a future-year change this calculator doesn't model, since it targets the current 2026 tax year.

This is the edge case that catches people moving to part-time, taking unpaid leave, or changing employers mid-year. If your annualised taxable salary genuinely falls below the minimum threshold, the Belastingdienst can withdraw the ruling from that point, not just going forward, in some cases retroactively for the calendar year. A short dip covered by holiday pay or a bonus that keeps your annualised figure above the bar is usually fine; a sustained drop, such as reducing to part-time hours, is the scenario to flag with your payroll team before it happens, not after.

You generally must be recruited from abroad or transferred to a Dutch employer, have specific expertise scarce in the Dutch labour market, and not have lived within 150km of the Dutch border for more than 16 of the 24 months before starting work in the Netherlands. Your employer applies for the ruling with the Belastingdienst on your behalf; it isn't something you can self-certify. This calculator only checks the salary threshold, not these other conditions.

Yes. The ruling applies to your total gross Box 1 employment income for the year, including vakantiegeld (holiday allowance), bonuses, and other salary components, not just your base pay. The 30% carve-out is calculated on that combined figure.

It models the 30% ruling as a flat 30% tax-free allowance (2026 status, no step-down) against 2026 Box 1 tax bands (35.75% / 37.56% / 49.50%), and the 2026 minimum taxable-salary thresholds. It doesn't check the non-salary eligibility conditions (recruitment-from-abroad, 150km border rule, specific expertise) or model the rate change to 27% for rulings starting from 2027. For your exact eligibility and figures, check with your employer's payroll team or a Dutch tax adviser.