The Dutch tax system
The rules behind everything above: how the Belastingdienst sorts income, where each kind lands and who counts as a fiscal partner.
Essential cookies keep this site working. With your permission we also use statistics cookies, to see how the site is used and improve it, and marketing cookies, so we can show you our ads. You can change your choice at any time via 'Cookie settings' at the bottom of every page.
Guides you can download, checklists you can work through and the Dutch tax returns explained one by one. Every card says what it is, so you can tell before you open it.
Orientation
We publish free material you can take away and use on your own. Guides you download and checklists you work through. The Dutch tax returns explained one form at a time. And the rules themselves, for when you would rather look them up.
All of it is edited to the standard on our editorial guidelines page. Every page carries the date it was last reviewed, at the top.
Just arrived in the Netherlands? Start with the M-form further down, because your first Dutch return is not the ordinary one. The Belastingdienst, the Dutch tax office, hosts the returns themselves and our pages explain which one is yours.
None of it is advice about your own situation. Every page here is written for a case rather than for you. Use it on your own, before you decide whether you need anybody at all.
This page routes, it does not explain. Want the rules themselves rather than something to take away? The Dutch tax system is the section that holds them, and it is far the larger of the two.
Guides and checklists
Four pages here leave you with something you can still use tomorrow. The shelf holds our guides. The three checklists are pages you work down rather than files you download, so they ask nothing of you at all.
None of the four is written for one particular reader. Where your own year has a wrinkle in it, that is what a conversation is for rather than a checklist.
The forms
The Belastingdienst names its returns by letter, and the letter is most of the difficulty. These four pages say which one applies to you, what it asks for and how it differs from the others.
We do not host the forms themselves. The Belastingdienst does, and each page sends you there once you know which one is yours.
Do it yourself
Two pages here hand you the reasoning rather than the answer. The first is the whole knowledge section behind everything above, and it is by a distance the larger of the two. The second walks through how a couple splits shared items, which is the choice most people leave sitting on its default.
Neither is a takeaway in the download sense. Both are pages you can use without ever speaking to us.
The rules behind everything above: how the Belastingdienst sorts income, where each kind lands and who counts as a fiscal partner.
How the allocation between fiscal partners works, and what moving it away from the default actually does.
Our free guides on filing, on owning a home and on inheritance tax. Each one arrives by email once you ask for it.
What the Belastingdienst asks for when an estate is declared, in the order it asks for it.
The tax side of setting up on your own: what you register, what you owe and when the first deadlines land.
Which alimony payments are deductible, which count as income and what you need to be able to show.
The return for the year you arrived in the Netherlands or left it. The longest of the four, and the one most people meet first.
The ordinary annual return, for a year you spent living in the Netherlands from start to finish.
The return for a year in which you were not a Dutch resident and still had Dutch income to declare.
The return filed on behalf of someone who died during the tax year, usually by the family.
Frequently asked
What people ask before they download anything. Yours not here? Ask Menno
Missing something?
If you came here for something and left without it, that is worth knowing. A fair number of these pages exist because somebody asked for them first.
What's included
A reply from the person who writes this material
No obligation to become a client
“The material here is written for a situation rather than for a person. That works until your year has something unusual in it. When it does, ask, and I will tell you honestly whether a page still covers you.”
Menno van der Made
Tax advisor
Ask us
If you were looking for something and it is not on this page, tell Menno what it was. He writes a good deal of this material. So he either knows where it is or knows that it does not exist yet, and both are useful answers.
