The 30% ruling (expat scheme) explained

Since 2025 the Tax Administration (Belastingdienst) calls the 30% ruling the expat scheme (expatregeling). Here you can read what the scheme is, how the exempt amount works, what changes in 2027 and which points we could not confirm officially. The tool Net salary with the 30% ruling works it out for you.

What the scheme is

An employer may give an employee who comes from abroad for specific expertise a tax-free allowance for extraterritorial costs. That allowance is at most 30% of the wage including the allowance, so 30/70 of the wage without it. Whatever the employer reimburses beyond that is ordinary wage. No wage tax (loonheffing) and no employee insurance contributions are levied on the exempt allowance. Your net salary is therefore higher than the ordinary result.

• Percentage: 30% in 2025 and 2026.
• Duration: at most 5 years; an earlier stay in the Netherlands counts against that period.
• Residence condition: for more than 16 of the 24 months before the start, you lived more than 150 km from the Dutch border.
• Applying: employer and employee apply for the scheme together. Within four months of the start, the grant takes effect retroactively from the start.
• Yearly choice: each year the employer chooses between the fixed amount (forfait) and reimbursing the actual costs.

How the amount is determined

The exempt allowance per year is the smallest of three amounts:

1. the percentage of the wage including the allowance;
2. the percentage of the WNT standard (the ceiling), the pay norm from the Dutch act on pay caps for top incomes (Wet normering topinkomens);
3. the wage minus the salary standard, because the wage after deducting the allowance may not fall below the standard.

Examples from the Wage Tax Handbook 2026 (Handboek Loonheffingen): with a wage of 70,000, at most 21,000 is exempt. With a wage of 50,000 and a standard of 48,013, at most 1,987 is exempt (the Handbook text says 1,986; the sum gives 1,987). From a wage of 262,000, the allowance is at most 78,600.

The salary standard and the ceiling

• Salary standard: currently €48,013 a year (since 1 January 2026), excluding the exempt allowance.
• Under 30 with a Dutch master's degree: €36,497 a year.
• WNT standard: €262,000. The ceiling applies per employer and pro rata for the part of the year.

What changes in 2027

From 2027 the exempt percentage is 27% for the whole remaining period of 60 months (Tax Plan 2025, Bulletin of Acts and Decrees (Staatsblad) 2024, 434). The salary standard and the WNT standard also go up. The 2027 standards in the Handbook are provisional: they will be indexed once more. The final standard follows in December 2026 in the Adjustment Regulation (Bijstellingsregeling).

The transition to 2027

For 2027 the tool only calculates for those who started from 2025. We could not officially confirm the 2027 standard for the other two groups; the tool does not calculate those combinations. The 2027 wage tax tables have not been published yet, so for 2027 the tool calculates with those of 2026.

What we could not confirm officially

• Holiday pay, 13th month and special remuneration: the official texts speak of wage from a current employment and say the exemption may be spread evenly over the pay periods. We calculate the exemption on the annual wage and spread it pro rata.
• Wage tax credit (loonheffingskorting): we found no text that makes it lapse. The tool applies it to the taxed wage.
• National insurance contributions (volksverzekeringen) and the income-related health insurance contribution (Zvw): this follows from the uniform wage concept (Handbook par. 4.1), but we did not find a sentence that says it explicitly.
• Pension: the pension base depends on the fund's rules.
• Allowances (toeslagen): whether the allowance counts toward the assessment income for benefits is not confirmed.
• Mortgage and unemployment benefit (WW): we only found secondary sources on this; the tool says nothing about it.
• 2027 standard: provisional until the Adjustment Regulation of December 2026.

Sources

• Content of the expat scheme (Belastingdienst, in Dutch)
• Wage Tax Handbook 2026 (Belastingdienst, PDF, in Dutch), par. 19.4
• Expat scheme for highly skilled foreign employees (Rijksoverheid, the Dutch central government, in Dutch)
• Staatsblad 2024, 434 (Tax Plan 2025, in Dutch)

We keep the amounts on this page up to date with current values; we check them again on 1 January and in December. As of 12 October 2026.

Tools for this guide

• Net Salary with the 30% Ruling (Expat Scheme) CalculatorNet pay with the 30% ruling, 2026 and 2027
• Net Salary Calculator Netherlands (Gross to Net, 2026)Gross to net per month, 2026

The Sumish editorial team