Applying for the 30% ruling: conditions, timing and 2027

You cannot apply for the 30% ruling on your own. Your employer and you apply together, on one form, and you must meet every condition: you were recruited from abroad, you lived more than 150 km from the Dutch border, and your salary is above a set level. If the application reaches the Belastingdienst within four months of your first working day, the ruling applies from that first day. The official name is now the expatregeling (expat scheme). The maximum falls from 30% to 27% on 1 January 2027 for most people, and the ruling runs for five years at most.

The conditions

The Belastingdienst lists these requirements. You have to meet all of them.

You are employed. The ruling is only for people in paid employment with the employer who applies. Self-employed people cannot use it.

You have specific expertise. In practice this is tested through your salary. Your taxable annual salary, not counting the tax-free allowance itself, must be above the norm for that year:

The lower norm applies if you have a Dutch academic master's degree or an equivalent foreign one. You can use it until the end of the month in which you turn 30. From the next month the standard norm applies.

There is no salary norm for scientific researchers at a designated research institution, or for doctors training to become specialists.

You were recruited from outside the Netherlands. That includes being recruited from Aruba, Curaçao, Sint Maarten or the BES islands.

You lived far enough from the border. For more than 16 of the 24 months before your first working day in the Netherlands, you must have lived more than 150 km, as the crow flies, from the Dutch border. In practice that rules out Belgium, Luxembourg and parts of Germany, France and the United Kingdom. There are two exceptions:

• If you did a PhD, the 150 km test is applied to the 24 months before your PhD research began. Living in or near the Netherlands during the PhD, and between finishing it and starting work, does not count against you.
• If you had the ruling before, left, and come back, you do not have to meet the 150 km test again, provided your earlier work period started no more than five years ago and you met the conditions at that time.

How the salary norm catches people out

The norm is tested on your salary after the tax-free allowance has been taken out. With the full 30%, your total salary therefore has to be well above €48,013.

Say your employer pays you €70,000 a year and gives you the full 30%. That makes €21,000 tax-free, and your taxable salary is €49,000. That is above the 2026 norm, so you qualify. The break-even point is €68,590: 70% of that is exactly €48,013, and the salary has to be above the norm.

Your employer has to check this every year. If your salary in a given year falls below the indexed norm, the ruling lapses retroactively to 1 January of that year and cannot be restored, even if your salary goes up again later. There is an exception for lower pay caused by parental, pregnancy, birth, foster care or adoption leave. In those cases the check uses what you would have earned without the leave.

How much, and for how long

The allowance may be up to 30% of your salary, including the allowance itself. Your employer is not obliged to give you the full 30%. It can agree a lower amount, so agree the figure before you apply.

Since 1 January 2026, the allowance is calculated over a salary of at most €262,000 a year. That is the top-salary limit from the Wet normering topinkomens (WNT, the Dutch act on top incomes). So the maximum tax-free allowance in 2026 is €78,600 for someone who uses the ruling for the whole year. For part of a year, the maximum is reduced pro rata.

A ruling lasts five years at most, and the end date is on the decision. The Belastingdienst deducts earlier periods in which you lived or worked in the Netherlands in the 25 years before you arrived. Short stays do not count: work adding up to less than 20 days a year, and private visits of no more than six weeks a year, or a single stay of up to three consecutive months.

The change to 27% in 2027

The maximum falls from 30% to 27% on 1 January 2027, and a higher salary norm also comes in that year. Which rules apply to you depends on when your ruling was first used:

For the first group, the protection is lost if you stop being an incoming employee and later become one again. Changing jobs within three months, with a joint request to continue the ruling, does not count as a break. The amount of the new 2027 norm had not been published on the Belastingdienst pages we checked. Ask your employer or adviser what it will be.

One related change: from the 2025 tax return onwards, you can no longer choose partial foreign tax liability, which treated you as a non-resident for box 2 and box 3. If you used the ruling before 2024, you can still choose it up to and including your 2026 tax return.

How to apply

1. Agree the allowance with your employer.
2. Fill in the form Application Income tax and national insurance contributions Expat Scheme (30% facility) for the right year, together with your employer. You both sign it.
3. Send it by post to Belastingdienst/Kennis- en Expertisecentrum Buitenland, PO Box 2865, 6401 DJ Heerlen.
4. The Belastingdienst says it will reply within 8 weeks.

Timing matters. If the application is made within four months of your first working day, the decision applies back to that day. If it is made later, there is no backdating. In the Belastingdienst's own example, someone who started on 1 February 2026 and applied on 15 June 2026 got a decision from 1 July 2026. Until then, the employer could only reimburse actual extra costs tax-free.

Each year your employer also has to choose between applying the ruling and reimbursing your actual extraterritorial costs (the extra costs of working away from home). That choice is made per calendar year.

If you change employer

• Within the same group of companies that the Belastingdienst treats as a connected group of withholding agents: the decision stays valid if you still meet the conditions, and no new application is needed.
• To an unconnected employer: the ruling can continue for the rest of its term if you start the new job within three months of leaving the old one. You and the new employer must apply again, within four months of your start date, to use it from your first working day there.

When a job ends, the ruling can be applied until the end of the pay period after the one containing your last working day. With monthly pay, a last day on 15 February 2026 means it applies up to and including 31 March 2026.

Where to go from here

Your net pay with and without the ruling is easy to compare in our net salary calculator. If you are unsure whether you meet the 150 km test or the salary norm, or how the 2027 change affects you, you can request tax advice and up to three English-speaking advisers will contact you. If you are buying a home, read the 30% ruling and your mortgage.

Sources

• Belastingdienst: Can I apply for the Expat Scheme (30% facility)?
• Belastingdienst: Expertise requirement
• Belastingdienst: Decision, validity and review of the conditions
• Belastingdienst: Content of the Expat Scheme
• Belastingdienst: Application form Expat Scheme (30% facility)
• Belastingdienst: Handboek Loonheffingen 2026, section 19.4 (PDF)
• Rijksoverheid: Expatregeling hoogopgeleide buitenlandse werknemers

Figures checked against the sources above on 23 September 2026.

Photo: Alf van Beem, Wikimedia Commons, Public domain.