Every euro of Dutch salary starts in Box 1, the Belastingdienst's bucket for employment income, taxed through three progressive bands that climb from 35.75% up to 49.50%. Your employer runs the withholding automatically each month, so the number on your payslip already reflects whichever band your income sits in.
The 30% ruling changes that calculation before the bands ever apply. If your employer has been granted the ruling for you, up to 30% of your gross salary is carved out as a tax-free allowance and only the remaining 70% runs through Box 1 tax. You never see the tax-free portion taxed at all, it simply shows up as extra net pay, which is why the gap between the with-ruling and without-ruling columns above grows larger at higher salaries, where more income would otherwise sit in the 49.50% top band.
Vakantiegeld sits alongside all of this rather than replacing it. The mandatory 8% holiday allowance is ordinary Box 1 salary income too, so if the ruling applies to your employment, its tax-free carve-out covers the vakantiegeld portion exactly the same way it covers your regular monthly pay, calculated on your combined gross income for the year.
None of this is guaranteed to stay this generous forever. The ruling runs for up to 5 years and, for anyone starting in 2026, is flat at 30% the whole way through after Parliament reversed the previously legislated 30-20-10 step-down. From 1 January 2027 the flat rate itself drops to 27% for new and ongoing rulings, a genuine reason not to treat today's figure as permanent.
