New Dutch legislation 2026: what changes for entrepreneurs

New Dutch legislation 2026 has changed three things that reach almost every business in the country: the Belastingdienst now enforces in full against false self-employment and can impose fines for culpable conduct, accepting or making a cash payment of 3,000 euro or more for goods is prohibited, and the wage cost benefit for older employees has been abolished. A fourth change is on the way but not yet in force: an Act introducing a statutory presumption of an employment contract below a set hourly rate has been passed and published, and awaits a royal decree. This article sets out what already applies, what is still pending, and where the practical risk sits for entrepreneurs in the Netherlands.

What changed for entrepreneurs in 2026

The 2026 package is not one reform but a cluster of measures from different corners of the statute book. Employment law, anti-money-laundering rules, payroll subsidies, cybersecurity and energy regulation all moved in the same twelve months. What ties them together is a shift in who has to demonstrate that the rules are being followed. On several fronts the legislature has stopped asking the authorities to prove that a business is in breach and has started asking the business to show that it is not. That shift, rather than any single rate or threshold, is what deserves an entrepreneur’s attention.

The practical consequence is that the paperwork you keep now determines the outcome of a dispute or an audit two years from now. A contract file that shows how a working relationship was assessed, a written cash policy, a supplier list that records which agencies are admitted: these are cheap to build in advance and very expensive to reconstruct afterwards. For the wider framework in which these measures sit, our Dutch corporate law guide for entrepreneurs sets out the corporate and contractual background.

The table below summarises the measures covered in this article, what each one actually requires, and whether it is already in force. It is a map rather than a substitute for advice, because several of these rules turn on how your business is organised in practice.

Key Dutch legislative changes for entrepreneurs

Enforcement against false self-employment is no longer theoretical

The enforcement moratorium on false self-employment (schijnzelfstandigheid) ended on 1 January 2025. Since that date the Belastingdienst can impose a correction obligation and an additional payroll tax assessment on a hiring party whose contractor is in reality an employee. In 2026 the tax authority has gone a step further: it can impose a vergrijpboete, a fine for culpable or intentional conduct, although it has said it will not yet impose the lighter verzuimboete for a simple failure. The transitional leniency of the first year has therefore narrowed rather than disappeared.

The reach of an assessment matters as much as the fine. As a rule the Belastingdienst limits recovery to the period from 1 January 2025 onwards. There are two exceptions, and both are ones an entrepreneur can walk into without meaning to. Where bad faith or deliberate false self-employment is established, and where the business ignored an earlier instruction from the tax authority about a specific working relationship, the ordinary five-year recovery period applies. An unanswered letter from an inspector is not a neutral event.

What actually decides whether someone is an employee

The written contract is not decisive. Dutch law looks at the substance of the relationship: under article 7:610 of the Burgerlijk Wetboek there is an employment contract where one party performs work for another, in that party’s service, in exchange for pay. In its Deliveroo judgment of 24 March 2023 (ECLI:NL:HR:2023:443) the Hoge Raad set out the factors a court weighs together, none of which is on its own conclusive:

• the nature and duration of the work, and how the work and the working hours are determined;
• how the worker is embedded in the organisation and in its ordinary operations;
• whether there is an obligation to perform the work personally;
• how the contract came about and how the parties have actually behaved since;
• how the remuneration is determined and paid, and what it amounts to;
• whether the worker bears commercial risk; and
• whether the worker behaves as an entrepreneur in the wider market, for example by acquiring clients, building a reputation and investing.

Read that list against your own arrangements rather than against the contract template. A contractor who works set hours at your premises, uses your equipment and your email address, attends the team meeting, has done so for three years and has no other clients is very hard to defend as independent, however carefully the agreement is drafted. Conversely, a specialist with several clients who quotes for a defined result and carries the risk of overrunning is usually straightforward.

What it costs when the classification is wrong

The exposure is not limited to the tax bill. If a working relationship is reclassified, the hiring party owes payroll tax and social security contributions that were never withheld, without a practical route to recover them from the contractor. Separately, the worker can bring an employment claim: a wage claim, a claim to the protection of the chain rule on successive fixed-term contracts, and dismissal protection if the engagement is ended. Those two tracks are independent, so a settlement with the Belastingdienst does not close the employment-law risk. Our article on the Flexible Workers Act and how to prepare covers the neighbouring reforms to flexible contracts.

A statutory presumption of employment below a set hourly rate

A separate Act introduces a rebuttable presumption of an employment contract for workers engaged below a statutory hourly rate. It was adopted by the Tweede Kamer on 21 April 2026 and by the Eerste Kamer on 16 June 2026, and published in the Staatsblad on 29 June 2026. It enters into force on a date to be set by royal decree, which may differ per provision, and that date has not been fixed. Until it does, the ordinary rules of evidence apply and the classification questions above govern.

Two points are widely misunderstood. First, this is not the broad Wet verduidelijking beoordeling arbeidsrelaties en rechtsvermoeden (VBAR) that was consulted on earlier. The part of that project which sought to codify the assessment criteria did not survive the parliamentary process; what was enacted is the presumption alone. Second, the hourly rate that triggers the presumption is laid down in the Act and is adjusted periodically, so the figures that circulated during the consultation are out of date. Check the rate in force at the moment you engage the worker rather than relying on a number from an older article.

The effect of the presumption is procedural but powerful. It does not turn a contractor into an employee by operation of law. It means that where the worker invokes the presumption before the court, the hiring party carries the burden of proving that the relationship is not an employment contract. In practice that reverses the usual dynamic of a dispute with a lower-paid freelancer, and it rewards the business that has kept a proper file: the quotation, the evidence of other clients, the substitution that actually took place, the invoices that vary with output.

The ban on large cash payments

Since 1 January 2026 a business in the Netherlands may not accept or make a cash payment of 3,000 euro or more for goods. The prohibition was introduced by the Wet plan van aanpak witwassen, which amends the Wet ter voorkoming van witwassen en financieren van terrorisme (Wwft), and it applies to any professional or commercial trade in goods, not only to dealers who were already subject to Wwft obligations. It is a ban on the transaction itself, not merely a duty to report it.

Because the rule targets the payment rather than the paperwork, the obvious workaround is also caught. Splitting a single purchase into several smaller cash instalments in order to stay under the limit is a breach, and so is accepting part in cash and part by transfer where the cash element reaches the threshold. The limit applies to the transaction, however it is invoiced. For the supply of services the position is different: the Wwft thresholds and the duty to report unusual transactions to FIU-Nederland continue to apply there, and a service provider who takes large cash payments should assess its obligations under that regime instead.

The businesses most affected are the ones that historically accepted cash for high-value items: motor vehicle sales, jewellery and watches, art and antiques, construction and fit-out work, hospitality with large events, and wholesale. For those businesses the practical response is not complicated but it does need to be written down. Set the limit in your terms and conditions and on the payment page, instruct staff in writing so that a refusal is never improvised at the till, configure the point-of-sale system so that a cash amount at or above the threshold cannot be completed, and keep the record of how payment was made with the invoice. Where a customer insists, the alternative is an instant bank transfer or payment in advance, not a negotiated split. Further practical guidance for businesses is published on the Dutch government business portal.

Employment costs and flexible labour

The end of the wage cost benefit for older employees

The wage cost benefit (loonkostenvoordeel, LKV) for older employees was abolished with effect from 1 January 2026. The abolition applies to employment relationships that began on or after 1 January 2024. Where an older employee entered service before that date, a transitional arrangement allows the benefit to continue to run, at the latest until 1 January 2027. It is therefore not correct that every employer loses the benefit for every older employee at a stroke, and it is worth checking the start date of each employment relationship against the UWV decision before writing the subsidy out of the budget.

The consequence is a straightforward increase in payroll cost for the businesses that relied on it, and it lands in the same year as several other cost increases. Employers who applied for the benefit should reconcile the Wtl decision they receive from the UWV with their own payroll records, because errors in that reconciliation tend to surface only when the correction period has closed.

Hiring through agencies: the Wtta

The Wet toelating terbeschikkingstelling van arbeidskrachten (Wtta) introduces an admission requirement for any business that makes workers available to others, including temporary employment agencies, payrolling companies and secondment businesses. The admission regime is administered through registration with the newly created supervisory body, the NAU, with a registration window running from 1 November to 31 December 2026. The Act takes effect on 1 January 2027 and enforcement follows from 1 January 2028.

The obligation is not only on the supplier. A hirer that engages workers through a provider without admission is itself in breach, which makes this a procurement question as much as an HR question. The sensible steps now are to list every party that currently supplies you with labour, to ask each of them in writing whether they will register in the window, and to add a clause to the framework agreement requiring admission and allowing you to suspend or terminate if it is refused or withdrawn. A supplier who cannot answer that question clearly in the autumn of 2026 is a supplier to replace rather than to chase in 2028.

Cybersecurity, energy and governance rules that now reach ordinary businesses

The Cyberbeveiligingswet, which implements the European NIS2 directive in the Netherlands, has been in force since 15 August 2026. It imposes a duty of care and a duty to report on entities designated as essential or important across a wide range of sectors, requires registration with the NCSC, and sets two reporting deadlines for significant incidents: an initial notification within 24 hours and a fuller report within 72 hours. Many mid-sized businesses assume the regime is aimed only at utilities and banks. It is not: the sector annexes reach manufacturing, digital services, waste, food distribution and transport, and larger clients routinely pass equivalent obligations down the supply chain by contract even where the supplier is not directly designated.

The practical question for an entrepreneur is therefore twofold. Determine whether your business falls within scope directly, which depends on sector and size, and separately review what your customers now require of you contractually in the way of security measures, audit rights and incident notification. The second obligation often bites first, because a customer’s procurement team moves faster than a supervisory authority. Where you conclude you are in scope, the registration duty and the 24-hour clock are the two items to have organised before an incident, not after one.

In the energy field, the Energiewet has applied since 1 January 2026 and replaces the Elektriciteitswet 1998 and the Gaswet with a single framework. For most businesses this is felt through their connection, their supply contract and the rules on sharing consumption data rather than through direct regulation, but it does change the legal basis of agreements that were drafted under the old acts and it is a reason to look again at long-term energy contracts.

One governance change from the previous year still deserves a mention because it is easy to miss. The Wet aanpassing geschillenregeling en verduidelijking ontvankelijkheidseisen enqueteprocedure (WAGEVOE) has been in force since 1 January 2025. It modernised the statutory dispute rules between shareholders and the admissibility requirements for the enquiry procedure before the Ondernemingskamer (Enterprise Chamber). For a besloten vennootschap with more than one shareholder, that is the framework a deadlock will now be resolved in, and shareholders’ agreements written before 2025 often still assume the older procedure.

Tax measures: what to raise with your tax adviser

Several of the changes entrepreneurs read about for 2026 are fiscal rather than legal, and they behave differently from the rules above: rates, brackets and allowances are reset every year in the Tax Plan (Belastingplan) and published by the Belastingdienst. We deliberately do not reproduce the figures here, because an article that quotes them is wrong within a year and a business that plans on last year’s numbers is worse off than one that looks them up. What is stable is the direction of travel. The self-employed allowance (zelfstandigenaftrek) continues to be reduced in steps, the corporate income tax structure has been left broadly intact, and the transfer tax charged on residential property acquired as an investment has been lowered to encourage corporate participation in the rental market.

Law and More does not provide tax structuring advice, and an entrepreneur weighing up the numbers should take them from an accountant or a tax adviser. What we do advise on is the legal half of the same decision, which is usually the half that gets skipped. Whether to continue as a sole trader (eenmanszaak) or to incorporate as a besloten vennootschap is only partly a tax calculation. It also determines who is liable for the debts of the business, what happens to existing contracts, licences and lease agreements on a transfer, how the assets and goodwill are valued and transferred, and what a future investor or buyer will be able to acquire. Our guide to financing and securities for Dutch companies sets out how those choices affect the security a lender will ask for.

Two consequences of incorporation are regularly underestimated. A besloten vennootschap separates personal assets from business debts, but that separation is not absolute: a director can be held personally liable for improper management, for continuing to trade while insolvency is foreseeable, and for unpaid payroll taxes where the inability to pay has not been notified in time. And a transfer of an existing business into a new entity is a transaction in its own right, with contractual consent requirements, employee rights on transfer of undertaking, and registration steps that need to be sequenced correctly. For general background on the firm and its practice areas, see Law and More.

What entrepreneurs should do now

The single most urgent item is the review of contracts with self-employed workers, because it is the only change in this article that can produce retrospective liability. Everything else costs money or effort going forward; a misclassified working relationship generates a bill for a period that has already passed. Start with the engagements that have run longest and at the lowest rates, since those are the ones that combine the weakest independence profile with the largest accumulated exposure, and record the assessment in writing at the time you make it rather than reconstructing it later.

The rest of the work is sequencing. The cash payment rule needs a written policy and a configured till, not a project. The LKV change needs a line in the payroll budget and a check of each employment start date. The Wtta needs a supplier inventory before the registration window closes at the end of 2026 and a contract clause before the Act applies in 2027. The cybersecurity assessment needs a scoping decision now and, if you are in scope, a registration and an incident procedure that someone owns by name.

Mistakes that turn a manageable problem into an expensive one

Three patterns account for most of the trouble we see. The first is relying on a model agreement as if it were a licence. A template that was once approved says something about the words on the page and nothing about how the work is actually carried out, and it is the practice that decides. The second is fixing the classification problem by changing the contract while leaving the daily reality untouched: renaming a role, adding a substitution clause that nobody would ever be allowed to use, or moving the invoicing through an intermediary. Those changes are visible to an inspector and they tend to be read as awareness of the risk rather than as a cure for it.

The third is silence. Where the Belastingdienst raises a specific working relationship, or a contractor writes to say they consider themselves an employee, the period in which the matter can be resolved cheaply is short. Ignoring the letter is what converts an ordinary correction into the five-year recovery period and into a discussion about intent. The same is true of the newer obligations: an incident that should have been reported within 24 hours, or a supplier whose admission lapses, becomes a much larger problem once it has been left unaddressed for a quarter.

A related point concerns groups of companies. Where contractors are engaged by one entity and work for another, or where a personnel company supplies staff internally, the analysis has to be done per relationship and per entity. Businesses that carried out a single review at group level often discover that the exposure sits in the entity that has the fewest assets and the least documentation, which is precisely the entity a director can be held personally responsible for.

A practical action plan

Entrepreneurs setting up or expanding in the Netherlands will find the same themes in a local context in our guide to setting up a business in Eindhoven, which covers the corporate, employment and permit steps in sequence.

Law and More advises entrepreneurs and companies in the Netherlands on employment and contractor arrangements, commercial contracts, corporate structure and compliance obligations, and represents them when a dispute or an investigation follows. If you would like your contractor agreements, your supplier arrangements or your internal policies reviewed against the rules described above, our lawyers are happy to go through them with you. Please contact us to discuss your situation.

Frequently asked questions about the 2026 changes

The questions below come up most often when entrepreneurs apply these rules to their own business.

For contracting across borders under the new rules, see choosing a Dutch law firm for international contracts.