Dividend vs salary from a Dutch BV

What is the dividend vs salary choice in a Dutch BV?

Salary is compulsory up to a legal minimum. Dividend is the part you choose.

You hold a substantial interest once you own at least 5% of the shares². Work in that company as well and the Belastingdienst sets a floor under your salary¹. That floor is the gebruikelijkloonregeling, the customary-salary rule. It applies to the shareholder who also works in the company, the DGA.

The two routes land in different places. Salary sits in Box 1, where the rate tops out at 49.50% in 2026⁴. Dividend runs through two taxes, each at a lower rate. The BV pays corporation tax on the profit first³. You pay Box 2 tax when the money reaches you².

One neighbouring question sits elsewhere. The choice between a sole proprietorship and a BV belongs on sole proprietorship or BV.

Ayla moved to the Netherlands in 2017. She runs a consultancy through her own BV in Nijmegen. Her 30% ruling expired last year. After her salary, €30,000 of profit is left in the company for the year. Her figures run through the rest of this page.

How much salary does a DGA have to take in 2026?

The floor is €58,000 in 2026 and a comparable job can push it higher.

The Belastingdienst compares three amounts and takes the highest of them¹. The first is the salary in the most comparable job outside your own company. The second is the salary of the highest-paid employee in your BV or in a connected company. The third is the €58,000 floor for 2026. In 2025 and 2024 that floor stood at €56,000¹.

Until 2023 you could apply a discount to the comparable-salary figure. That discount, the doelmatigheidsmarge (efficiency margin), is gone. The comparison now runs at the full amount, which lifts the floor for a good many owners.

A lower salary is still possible where you can show that genuinely comparable work pays less¹. What you cannot do is skip the test and start with the dividend.

So the floor is the starting point rather than the answer. Above it, the choice between more salary and more dividend opens up. Ayla has her salary settled for the year, so the €30,000 is the only amount still to place. Both routes run on the 2026 figures in the table below.

What does the dividend route actually cost?

Between 38.8% and 48.8% in 2026, depending on the brackets you land in.

Those two figures come straight out of the table above. The dividend route stacks two taxes. The BV first pays corporation tax on the profit, at 19% up to €200,000 and 25.8% above it³. Limited deductible business costs covers what the company may deduct before that profit stands. What is left can go out as dividend, where Box 2 takes 24.5% up to €68,843 and 31% above that².

Stack the two lower brackets and the combined burden is 38.8%. Stack the two upper brackets and it is 48.8%. In Box 1 that 49.50% rate only applies above €78,426⁴. Against that top rate the gap closes from about eleven points to under one.

That is where the decision actually turns. Dividend does not carry one rate. It carries a rising one. The bigger the payout, the less the route is worth.

Two things sit outside the percentages and still move the answer. Salary builds pension and counts towards income-dependent schemes. Dividend does neither. What salary does for your pension sits on our pension page.

Below €78,426 your Box 1 rate is 37.56%, lower than the top rate. Compare against your own bracket. A BV may only pay dividend if it can still pay its bills afterwards. The table below sets both ends of the dividend range against salary.

What does the choice look like on €30,000 of profit?

Ayla keeps €3,196.50 more by taking the €30,000 as dividend.

The rates from the table do all the work here. Her salary already passes the €78,426 threshold. If she takes the €30,000 as extra salary, the top Box 1 rate of 49.50% applies⁴. The tax comes to €14,850 and she keeps €15,150.

If she takes the same €30,000 as dividend, it moves in two steps. Corporation tax of 19% takes €5,700³ and leaves €24,300 in the BV. Box 2 then takes 24.5% of that €24,300², which is €5,953.50. She keeps €18,346.50.

The difference is €3,196.50 on these amounts, in this year, for this example. Push the payout past €68,843 and the second Box 2 bracket bites. Push the company profit past €200,000 and the higher corporation-tax rate does the same.

What the example cannot show is the rest of her position. Pension build-up, income-dependent schemes and any cross-border element all sit outside this arithmetic. The eight steps sit in the table below, with our advisor’s view underneath it.

How do the 30% ruling and a move abroad change the picture?

Part of your salary becomes tax-free, so salary costs less than the headline rate.

That shifts the comparison in one specific place. The floor under your salary still applies and the ruling does not remove it. What changes is the effective rate on the salary you do take. The dividend route is then less obviously the cheaper one.

The ruling has also shrunk over recent years. What it is worth to you depends on when yours started and what it still covers. We do not restate its conditions here. The 30% ruling page carries the eligibility rules and the periods in full.

Leaving the Netherlands raises a second question. Your substantial interest does not disappear when you move. The Belastingdienst records the growth in value of your shares. That record is the conserverende aanslag, a preservation assessment. You do not pay it straight away. Under conditions the Belastingdienst defers that payment.

How big that claim is depends on your situation. The tax treaty with your new country matters too. Paying out dividend just before you leave changes the picture again. We do not write out the conditions here. They differ per situation and per treaty.

Hold the ruling or thinking about leaving? Then take that to an advisor with your figures for the year.

What should you check before you fix your own split?

Start with the floor under your salary, then find where your own tipping point sits.

The arithmetic above gives you the shape of the decision and not your answer. Five things move that tipping point in a real situation. Your salary floor comes first, because the law fixes it before anything else is a choice. The size of the company profit comes second, since it decides which corporation-tax bracket applies.

Third is how much you pay out, which decides whether Box 2 moves into its second bracket. Fourth is everything sitting around the two routes: pension build-up, income-dependent schemes, a loan from your own BV and any cross-border element. Fifth is the Box 1 bracket your own salary already reaches. That bracket sets the rate you compare against.

We do not publish a rule of thumb here, because a rule of thumb is what gets this wrong. The split that works out best for one owner is a different number for the next. It also moves from one year to the next.

Ayla is already in the top bracket on salary, so dividend wins on her €30,000. She takes the dividend this year and runs the same sum again next year. Your own bracket may sit lower. Then the answer can flip.

Neighbouring pages carry the rest of the picture. Substantial assets covers what a substantial interest means alongside the rest of your wealth. Also working outside the BV on your own account, as a zzp’er? That’s the Dutch term for a sole trader. The self-employed tax return covers that side, not this one. Still setting the company up? Then starting a business in the Netherlands covers the first decisions. Working the whole set through on your own figures is what we do at tax advice for entrepreneurs.