What is the 30% ruling in the Netherlands, and what changes in 2027?

The 30% ruling lets a Dutch employer pay part of a foreign employee's salary tax free, as a fixed allowance for the extra costs of moving. According to the Dutch government, the maximum drops from 30% to 27% on 1 January 2027, and a higher salary limit starts on the same day for people who began using it in 2025 or later.

A founder budgeting a first Dutch payroll usually hears about the 30% ruling before anything else. It is the Dutch tax break for staff recruited from abroad, it is real money, and it is changing. This guide is for a company whose parent sits outside Europe and wants to know what it can put in an offer for next year.

One note on the name: the Belastingdienst, the Dutch tax office, now calls it the expat ruling. Almost everyone else still says the 30% ruling. Both mean the same thing.

What is the 30% ruling, and who can use it?

It is a fixed, tax free allowance for the extra costs of living in the Netherlands, paid through payroll instead of against receipts. According to the Belastingdienst, the employee has to be recruited from abroad, earn above a set taxable salary, and have lived more than 150 kilometres from the Dutch border before starting. Employer and employee apply for it together.

The conditions are narrow, and three of them catch foreign groups out:

• The distance rule. The employee must have lived more than 150 kilometres from the Dutch border for more than 16 of the 24 months before their first working day. That rules out Belgium and Luxembourg, much of Germany and northern France.
• The salary test repeats every year. If a year comes in below the limit, the ruling falls away back to 1 January of that year, and earlier payroll filings have to be corrected.
• The decision has an end date. It runs for five years at most, and earlier stays or work in the Netherlands in the 25 years before arrival are deducted from that term.

Sources:
Belastingdienst, Definitie ingekomen werknemer
Belastingdienst, Beschikking: geldigheid en toetsen voorwaarden

What is it worth in 2026?

According to the Belastingdienst, an employer may pay at most 30% of the salary including the allowance tax free in 2026, and the taxable salary that is left has to stay above EUR 48,013 a year. For an employee under 30 with a Dutch master's degree or an equivalent foreign one, that limit is EUR 36,497. Both figures are for 2026.

Those two rules interact, and the tax office shows it with its own example. On a salary of EUR 50,000 including the allowance, the full 30% is not available: since the taxable part has to stay above EUR 48,013, the allowance can be at most EUR 1,986.

There is a ceiling at the other end too. In 2026 the tax free allowance is at most EUR 78,600 a year, reached at a salary of EUR 262,000 or more. That ceiling comes from the Dutch act on senior pay, and from 1 January 2026 it applies to everyone using the ruling.

Sources:
Belastingdienst, Inhoud van de expatregeling
Belastingdienst, Deskundigheidsvereiste
Rijksoverheid, Expatregeling hoogopgeleide buitenlandse werknemers

What changes on 1 January 2027?

Two things, and they do not reach everyone the same way. According to the Dutch government, the maximum tax free share drops from 30% to 27%, and a higher salary limit starts too. Which of the two applies depends on the year an employee's decision first took effect, so one team can sit in three groups.

For a company that has not hired here yet, only the bottom row matters: every new decision lands in the group that gets both the lower rate and the higher limit. Business.gov.nl publishes that new limit as EUR 50,436, and EUR 38,388 for the under 30 group with a master's degree, and adds that both are corrected for inflation every year. So the figure that applies on 1 January 2027 is the indexed version, published with the 2027 rates.

Sources:
Rijksoverheid, Expatregeling hoogopgeleide buitenlandse werknemers
Business.gov.nl, 30% ruling: compensation for expats down to 27%

Does the salary the IND asks for match the salary the tax office asks for?

No, and this is where offers go wrong. Two Dutch bodies look at the same package and measure it differently. The IND, the Dutch immigration service, tests the gross monthly salary before any tax treatment. The tax office tests the annual taxable salary that is left once the allowance is taken out. A package can clear one test and fail the other.

The IND also leaves holiday allowance out of its monthly test, while the tax office works from taxable annual pay. The two limits are not two versions of one number, they are two measurements of one package. What each is for this year is in the minimum salary for a highly skilled migrant in 2026 and what qualifies as a highly skilled migrant.

Founders usually agree a gross package that clears the IND limit first, because without the permit there is no employee, then check what is left above the tax limit once the allowance is applied.

Sources:
IND, Required amounts income requirements
Belastingdienst, Deskundigheidsvereiste

What does not change in 2027?

The shape of the scheme stays as it is: five years at most, the same distance rule, and employer and employee still applying together. The deadline that quietly costs companies money is unchanged too, and it is short.

To use the ruling from the employee's first working day, the request has to reach the tax office within four months of that day. Later than that, and the ruling only starts on the date of the decision; for the months in between the employer can reimburse actual costs only, with proof. The tax office says it replies within eight weeks of a complete request.

An employer can also skip the ruling and reimburse the real extra costs tax free instead. That choice is made once a year, in the first payroll period.

Sources:
Belastingdienst, Verzoek loonheffingen expatregeling (30%-regeling)
Business.gov.nl, Employing highly skilled migrants

Where this sits in a move to Europe

The ruling is a payroll matter: it only exists once there is a Dutch employer with a payroll number and a permit for the person. The immigration routes are set side by side in which visa route fits your team, the payroll side in how a foreign company runs payroll in the Netherlands, and the wider order of a landing on the Route.

Sources

1. Rijksoverheid, Expatregeling hoogopgeleide buitenlandse werknemers (in Dutch), checked 22 September 2026
2. Belastingdienst, Inhoud van de expatregeling (in Dutch), checked 22 September 2026
3. Belastingdienst, Deskundigheidsvereiste (in Dutch), checked 22 September 2026
4. Belastingdienst, Beschikking: geldigheid en toetsen voorwaarden (in Dutch), checked 22 September 2026
5. Belastingdienst, Definitie ingekomen werknemer (in Dutch), checked 22 September 2026
6. Belastingdienst, Verzoek loonheffingen expatregeling (30%-regeling) (in Dutch), checked 22 September 2026
7. Business.gov.nl, 30% ruling: compensation for expats down to 27%, checked 22 September 2026
8. IND, Required amounts income requirements, checked 22 September 2026

Checked on 22 September 2026. This page is general information, not legal, tax or investment advice. Rules change: check the official source, or ask an adviser, before you act on it.