When does a foreign company have a permanent establishment in the Netherlands?

When it has a place of business here with enough facilities to run an independent enterprise, or a permanent representative acting for it. A warehouse, a goods depot and support work such as research, advertising or supplying information fall outside that. The tax treaty with your country carries its own description, which can differ.

A permanent establishment is a vaste inrichting. It is the point at which a foreign company stops being purely foreign for Dutch tax purposes and starts having Dutch obligations of its own, without ever forming a Dutch company.

This matters most to companies testing the market first. A founder who rents a desk, sends a salesperson over for a few months, or hires a local agent is often surprised to find that the tax question has already been triggered, or relieved to find that it has not. The rules below are the ones the Netherlands Tax Administration and the Dutch corporate income tax act publish. Borderline cases are genuinely difficult and are decided on the facts, so this is a question founders usually put to a Dutch tax adviser before the arrangement starts rather than after.

What counts as a permanent establishment?

The Tax Administration describes it as a place of business in the Netherlands with sufficient facilities for running an independent enterprise, which is part of the enterprise established abroad and through which goods or services are supplied. The examples it gives are a shop or other fixed sales outlet, and a workplace or factory with an office.

The test is about substance, not about signage. What the Tax Administration is looking for is a fixed place here that could function as a business on its own, used to supply goods or services, rather than a postal address or a temporary presence.

Sources:
Belastingdienst, You have a permanent establishment in the Netherlands
Belastingdienst, What is a foreign entrepreneur?

What does not count?

Four things are named explicitly. A warehouse is not a permanent establishment. Neither is a goods depot. Neither is an establishment that carries out only support activities, such as research, advertising or the provision of information. Nor is a holiday home intended for rent.

That third one deserves a second look from anyone landing in Europe, because it cuts both ways. A representative office doing market research and publicity is outside the test as long as it stays there. The moment the same office starts closing sales or delivering services to customers, the description no longer fits. Business.gov.nl draws the same line for a branch office, listing advertising, research, service departments and warehouses as the non-permanent side, and a sales outlet, a store or a workplace as the permanent side.

Sources:
Belastingdienst, What is a foreign entrepreneur?
Business.gov.nl, Setting up a Dutch branch office or subsidiary

Can a person trigger it instead of a place?

Yes, and this is the part that catches companies with no office here at all. The Dutch corporate income tax act taxes a foreign company on its Dutch income, and defines that to include the profit of a business, or part of a business, carried on with the help of a permanent establishment in the Netherlands or a permanent representative in the Netherlands.

A permanent representative is a person or company acting here for the foreign business. So the arrangement that looks lightest, an agent on the ground with no premises, can still put Dutch profit on the table. Whether it does depends on what that person is allowed to do in your name, which is why the contract with an agent is worth reading with a tax adviser next to you.

Source: Wet op de vennootschapsbelasting 1969, articles 3 and 17, version of 1 January 2026

What follows once there is one?

Three separate obligations, and they do not arrive together. The company becomes a foreign taxpayer for corporate income tax on its Dutch income. It becomes the withholding agent for payroll taxes for the people working here. And for VAT it stops being a foreign entrepreneur, which changes how it registers.

The rates on that Dutch profit are in the Dutch corporate income tax rate in 2026. The payroll side means registering as an employer with the Netherlands Tax Administration, because that is what the tax office says a company with a permanent establishment here has to do. The VAT side runs through the route described in how a foreign company registers for VAT.

Registration in the Dutch Business Register follows a different rule again. A foreign company with a branch here registers with KvK, the Dutch Chamber of Commerce, and so does a foreign business without a Dutch branch that supplies workers for payment in or to the Netherlands.

Sources:
Belastingdienst, You have a permanent establishment in the Netherlands
Business.gov.nl, Foreign company registration in the Netherlands

Does the tax treaty change the answer?

It can, and it often does. The Tax Administration states that many tax treaties contain their own description of what counts as a permanent establishment, that this description can differ per treaty, and that a company should check the treaty its country has concluded with the Netherlands to work out whether there is one.

In other words, the Dutch domestic description is where you start and not where you finish. Whether your country has a treaty at all, and since when, is in does the Netherlands have a tax treaty with your country. Founders who decide the answer is yes, and who would rather have a clean Dutch company than an uncertain establishment, usually move on to branch or subsidiary in the Netherlands and to whether you need to live in the Netherlands to run a Dutch BV.

Source: Belastingdienst, You have a permanent establishment in the Netherlands

Sources

1. Belastingdienst, You have a permanent establishment in the Netherlands, checked 22 September 2026
2. Belastingdienst, What is a foreign entrepreneur?, checked 22 September 2026
3. Wet op de vennootschapsbelasting 1969, version of 1 January 2026 (wetten.overheid.nl, in Dutch), checked 22 September 2026
4. Business.gov.nl, Setting up a Dutch branch office or subsidiary, checked 22 September 2026
5. Business.gov.nl, Foreign company registration in the Netherlands, 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.