No 30 percent tax ruling for Dutch-resident foreigner

When someone is temporarily resident in the Netherlands rather than in his or her own country of origin, he or she may qualify for tax exemption for up to 30 percent his or her wage and allowances in compensation of his or her extraterritorial costs. The regime in question is reserved for inbound workers, i.e. employees from abroad whose specific expertise is thin on the ground in the Dutch labour market. Any employee who already had Dutch-resident tax payer status at the time he or she concluded his or her employment contract with a Dutch employer will not be eligible for the 30 percent tax ruling regime, as he or she will not be regarded as “having been recruited from abroad”.

The North Holland District Court ruled that an Italian national to whom residential accommodation in the Netherlands had been available since the first of July 2012 and who – having attended a training course at Delft University of Technology until the first of December 2012 – had been employed in the Netherlands since the seventh of January 2013 had been a Dutch resident at the moment the employment contract was concluded, and therefore did not qualify for admission to the 30 percent ruling regime. The Italian national in question had been registered in the Dutch municipal personal records data base since October 2012 and had filed an income tax return for 2013 as a domestic tax payer.

The District Court ended up dismissing the plaintiff’s reliance on a decree by the Junior Finance Minister to the effect that it should be permissible for the 30 percent ruling regime to be made use of where the person in question had first been working in the Netherlands in a traineeship or educational context and in follow-up thereto had been offered an employment contract as an inbound worker. According to the District Court, however, there had been no question of a traineeship.

Dutch version: Geen 30%-regeling voor al in Nederland wonende buitenlander