The 30% ruling lets eligible employees recruited from abroad receive part of their salary tax-free, to cover the extra cost of working in the Netherlands. Here is how eligibility, duration and the payroll mechanics actually work.
What to expect
Polder handles the 30% ruling application alongside Dutch payroll administration, so eligibility, salary thresholds and the payroll mechanics are aligned from day one — for both employers and relocating founders.
The 30% ruling is the tax facility most founders and relocating employees ask about first, and also the one most often misunderstood. It is not a flat 30% tax cut — it is a tax-free reimbursement for the genuine extra costs of moving to and working in the Netherlands, administered through payroll. Getting the eligibility and the payroll mechanics right from day one avoids a costly correction later.
Employers can pay up to 30% of an eligible employee's salary as a tax-free allowance, without the employee having to prove the actual extraterritorial costs (double housing, travel to the home country, cost-of-living differences) it is meant to cover.
It is applied inside the monthly payroll run, not claimed separately at year-end — the employer's payroll administration has to be set up correctly from the first payslip.
In broad terms, the ruling is for employees who are recruited or transferred from abroad to work for a Dutch employer, who have specific expertise that is scarce in the Dutch labour market, and who lived more than roughly 150 km from the Dutch border for most of the two years before starting the job.
A minimum taxable salary threshold applies, with a lower threshold for employees under 30 who hold a qualifying master's degree. The application must be filed within four months of the start of employment to get the ruling backdated to the first working day; filing later means it only applies from a later month.
The rules were tightened for new cases: the tax-free share now steps down over the maximum period rather than staying flat at 30% throughout, and there is a salary cap above which the tax-free allowance no longer applies to the excess.
Because both the percentages and the cap are adjusted periodically, treat any specific figure as a starting point for a conversation, not a final number — verify the current thresholds on the Belastingdienst page linked below before running payroll on them.
The ruling changes gross-to-net calculations, the taxable base for social security, and how the employment contract should describe the allowance. It also has to be re-evaluated if the employee changes role, employer, or salary during the ruling period.
This is why Polder handles the 30% ruling application and the ongoing payroll administration together for employer clients — a ruling that is approved but wired incorrectly into payroll is a common, avoidable source of correction cycles.
The two mistakes we see most often: filing after the four-month window and losing the backdating, and assuming a director-shareholder of their own BV qualifies on the same terms as a regular employee — that case needs a separate check.
A second, quieter mistake is not reassessing the ruling when someone switches employer within the same group; the clock and the conditions don't automatically carry over without a fresh check.
Startup visa holders are usually self-employed founders rather than payroll employees, so the ruling doesn't apply the same way it does to hired staff. If the founder later moves onto a company payroll (their own BV or another employer), eligibility has to be assessed at that point on its own merits.
You can still apply, but the backdating to your first working day only happens if the request is filed within four months of starting the job. After that, the ruling — if approved — typically starts from a later month, so the sooner it's filed, the better.
The remaining duration can often continue with a new employer if the new role is taken up within three months and the original conditions are still met, but this needs a fresh review — it is not automatic.
No. It reduces the portion of salary that is taxable at all, rather than applying a lower rate to the full salary. The net effect resembles a tax reduction, but the mechanism is a tax-free reimbursement inside payroll.
Almost nothing else in the Netherlands works without a BSN — not payroll, not a bank account, not health insurance. Here is how founders and relocating employees actually get one, and where the process trips people up.
Both routes let non-EU nationals live and work in the Netherlands, but they solve different problems: the Startup Visa is for founders without a job offer, the Highly Skilled Migrant scheme is for people a Dutch employer sponsors. Picking the wrong one costs months.
Polder handles the 30% ruling application alongside Dutch payroll administration, so eligibility, salary thresholds and the payroll mechanics are aligned from day one — for both employers and relocating founders.
This intake is designed to prepare a useful response within one working day.
This usually takes less than two minutes.