What counts as income from other activities?

What is income from other activities?

Income from other activities is money you earn outside a job and a business. Nobody withholds payroll tax on it, so nothing reaches the Belastingdienst through an employer¹. You declare it yourself, in Box 1, the box for income from work.

Freelance jobs, childminding, odd jobs for other people and money from apps or online trading all count¹. The Belastingdienst calls what you end up with resultaat uit overig werk: your income minus the costs you may deduct¹.

One thing falls below this category. A hobby is not a source of income¹. It has no reasonable prospect of profit and you do not offer it to others for pay. It stays outside your return altogether. Something else goes beyond it: running an actual business. Our page about entrepreneur status for income tax covers that.

Take Nadia. She works four days a week for a Rotterdam design studio and takes occasional freelance translation jobs on the side. Her employer handles the payroll tax on her salary. Nobody handles anything on the translation work. Her translation work returns further down this page.

The six points below give you most of the answer.

Is your side income wages, other activities or business profit?

Three routes exist and your own facts decide which one you are on. The questions come in a fixed order. The first one is whether the work is a job.

If your client withholds payroll tax, the money is wages and belongs with your salary¹. If nobody withholds anything, the next question is whether you run a business. An entrepreneur for income tax declares winst uit onderneming, business profit¹.

Everything in between counts as income from other activities. The Belastingdienst weighs your own situation. Only your own figures answer it. Our page on entrepreneur status for income tax lists the conditions it uses.

What we can tell you is what each route means once you know which one is yours. The table below puts the three next to each other.

Which taxes do you pay on income from other activities?

You pay Box 1 income tax on the result, plus the Zvw contribution. Knowing which route you are on settles what you owe. This is the middle route's answer.

Result is the word that matters. The Belastingdienst does not tax your gross earnings, but your resultaat uit overig werk¹.

Two charges apply to that figure. The first is ordinary Box 1 income tax. The second is the inkomensafhankelijke bijdrage Zorgverzekeringswet, the income-dependent healthcare contribution¹. That second charge is the one people forget.

Both rates move with the tax year rather than with this category. You will find them on our page about Dutch tax rates and brackets.

There is one thing this route does not bring you.

Which costs may you deduct?

You deduct costs with a business character in full. So what does this route give you instead of the entrepreneur reliefs? The cost rules of a business, applied to a small activity¹.

Three categories determine most of it. A cost with a business character is fully deductible. A cost with no business character is not deductible at all. For a cost that is part business and part private, you deduct the business part only¹.

There is a fourth category that has specific rules. Some costs have a threshold, a fixed norm or a cap on what you may deduct¹. That category has its own page. Limited deductible business costs explains it.

One rule works the other way. If a client reimburses you for a business cost, you add that reimbursement to your income¹.

Whether a particular cost holds up is the kind of question worth putting to an advisor before you file.

How do you work out your result?

You take everything you earned and take off the costs you may deduct. Nadia's side jobs make that concrete. Over the year her two clients paid her €1,200 for translation work.

She spent €200 on the reference works she needed for those jobs. Those have a business character, so she deducts them in full. Her result is €1,000. That figure is what goes in her return.

Her salary stays separate. Her employer already withheld the payroll tax on it. The €1,000 counts alongside it in Box 1. Her total income for the year decides what she pays.

The table below shows the sum in three steps.

Do you owe VAT on this income as well?

You can owe VAT here without being an entrepreneur for income tax. So the routes above answer your income tax and leave VAT open. The two tests are separate, so one answer never settles the other¹.

If you supply your services as a business for VAT, you charge btw and you file VAT returns. The kleineondernemersregeling is the small-business VAT scheme. It exempts you from btw while your yearly turnover stays no higher than the ceiling in the table below². Above it, you charge and report btw again from the invoice that crosses the ceiling².

VAT has its own guide. How VAT works in the Netherlands covers registration, rates and returns in full.

The table below gives the figures for the scheme.

What do platforms report about you?

Platforms report your details to the Belastingdienst, with what you earned in each quarter. So what does that mean for what you declare? Your figures are already on file, which turns declaring them into a confirmation rather than a disclosure.

DAC7 is the rule behind it. It obliges platforms to collect, verify and report seller data. DAC7 applies from 1 January 2023³. Platforms report once a year, in January, over the year before³.

Influencer tax on your TikTok income lists which platforms report and their thresholds. It also explains what a creator has to do.

One question comes up more often than any other. It is not the one people expect.

What if you live outside the Netherlands?

Living abroad, you pay Dutch tax only on what you earned in the Netherlands. The rule is narrower than it first looks. Income from other activities with no Dutch source stays outside the Dutch return¹.

The question we hear most from internationals living here is the other one: do I have to register as self-employed? Income from other activities is not entrepreneurship for income tax, so the entrepreneur reliefs and their conditions are not yours to claim¹. Whether you should set something up is a separate decision. Starting a business in the Netherlands walks through it. Do you live here and work for a client abroad? Then you declare that income in your Dutch return too.

Several neighbouring questions have pages of their own.

What does this mean for you?

Name the route first, then the costs and the return follow. Everything above comes down to that one order. Get the route right and the rest of your return is ordinary work.

Do three things before you file. Note what each client paid you over the year. Note what you spent to earn it. Then ask yourself whether the work has grown past the point where it is still something you do on the side.

Does an earlier year now look wrong to you? That is worth a look rather than an assumption. We can read back through earlier returns with you and tell you whether they still hold.

Would you rather hand the whole thing over? Our page on help with your tax return shows what that looks like. Our hub for work and income gives you the wider picture.

Two sources support the facts on this page. The questions we hear most often follow them. Nadia's numbers are now in her return and yours follow the same steps.