Netherlands Statutory social-insurance contributions

What this value means

The single biggest trap: in the Netherlands the EMPLOYEE pays essentially no separate social-insurance line at all. The three volksverzekeringen (AOW 17,90% + Anw 0,10% + Wlz 9,65% = 27,65%) are levied INSIDE the first income-tax bracket, jointly with 8,10% wage tax, as one combined rate of 35,75% on box 1 income up to EUR 38.883. A payroll engine that models "Dutch social contributions" as a payslip deduction and ALSO applies a separate income-tax calculation will double-count roughly 27,65 points of levy. Conversely, an engine that treats the 35,75% as pure income tax will report the Dutch employee social-contribution rate as zero. Both are wrong. Everything else — Awf, Aof, Opslag Wko, Whk, Ufo and the Zvw werkgeversheffing — is EMPLOYER-ONLY and never appears as an employee deduction. TWO DIFFERENT CEILINGS, AND THEY ARE DELIBERATELY LINKED (this corrects the earlier version of this record). (a) The volksverzekeringen ceiling is the top of income-tax bracket 1: EUR 38.883 for 2026 — and EUR 41.123 for people born in 1945 or earlier, who get a wider first bracket. Note that the EUR 41.123 figure is irrelevant to the AOW premium: anyone born in 1945 or earlier is past AOW age and owes no AOW premium, so it bites only for Anw and Wlz. (b) The werknemersverzekeringen ceiling (maximumpremieloon) and the Zvw ceiling (maximum bijdrageloon / bijdrage-inkomen) are both EUR 79.409 for 2026. They are enacted through two instruments (SZW regeling art. III under Wfsv art. 17/18; Regeling zorgverzekering art. 5.2 and 5.3 under Zvw art. 42 lid 2 and 43 lid 3) — but they do NOT merely happen to coincide. Wfsv art. 18 lid 4 expressly governs the rounding and the calendar-year fixity of that amount "voor de berekening van het loon waarnaar de premies EN DE INKOMENSAFHANKELIJKE BIJDRAGE UIT DE ZORGVERZEKERINGSWET worden geheven", and the VWS explanatory note to Stcrt. 2025, 38055 states that the Zvw amount "is gelijk aan het maximumpremieloon voor de werknemersverzekeringen dat bij en krachtens artikel 17, eerste lid, eerste zin, van de Wfsv is geregeld voor het jaar 2026". The Belastingdienst publishes a single Tabel 11 for both, headed "Loontijdvakmaxima zijn gelijk voor de werknemersverzekeringen en de Zorgverzekeringswet". Keep them as two fields for safety, but expect them to move together and treat a divergence as a data error until proven otherwise. There is no floor or lower earnings limit anywhere in the system; contributions start at the first euro. HOW THE CEILING UPRATES. Wfsv art. 18 lid 1 revises the maximumpremieloon in step with, and by the same percentage as, the statutory minimum wage, rounding the result to the nearest multiple of EUR 2,61. This is why the annual figure is an odd number and why the period maxima do not multiply up cleanly. PER-EMPLOYER, NOT PER-PERSON. Wfsv art. 17 lid 1 caps the wage "bij dezelfde werkgever"; Zvw art. 42 lid 2 does the same "bij dezelfde inhoudingsplichtige". Two concurrent employers each apply the EUR 79.409 ceiling in full, with no aggregation and no refund on the employer-levy side. Two contrasts: the volksverzekeringen ceiling is per person and is trued up in the individual's income-tax assessment; and the employee-side Zvw bijdrage IS trued up, by a refund the inspecteur must grant under Zvw art. 50. THE CEILING IS APPLIED PER PAY PERIOD, NOT ANNUALLY. Official loontijdvak maxima for 2026 (Tabel 11): day EUR 305,41; week EUR 1.527,09; four weeks EUR 6.108,38; month EUR 6.617,41; quarter EUR 19.852,25; year EUR 79.409,00. These do not multiply up cleanly (12 x 6.617,41 = 79.408,92). Dutch payroll uses voortschrijdend cumulatief rekenen (VCR), a running cumulative method: the statutory basis is Wfsv art. 17 lid 3 (and Zvw art. 42 lid 5, which cross-refers to it). A naive per-period cap produces different annual totals from the correct method for anyone with variable pay. EMPLOYER RATES DEPEND ON THE EMPLOYER, AND ON A TWO-YEAR-OLD NUMBER. Aof laag (6,27%) vs hoog (7,63%), and the Whk small/medium/large classification, both turn on the employer's total premium wage bill in 2024 measured against the 2026 average premium wage of EUR 43.300: at most 25x (EUR 1.082.500) = small, at most 100x (EUR 4.330.000) = medium, above that = large (Besluit Wfsv art. 2.5 for the Whk, art. 2.19d for the Aof). Deriving this from current payroll misclassifies employers. These are classification THRESHOLDS, not ceilings. AWF LOW-VERSUS-HIGH IS A MANDATED 5,00 POINT SWING AND IS RETROACTIVELY REVISABLE. Besluit Wfsv art. 2.2 requires the high rate to be exactly five points above the low rate, so 2,74/7,74 is structural, not incidental. Low requires a written, indefinite-term, non-on-call contract, with a copy held in the payroll administration, and is barred where a uitzendbeding applies. It must be revised to the high rate if employment ends within two months, or if the employee is paid more than 30% extra hours in a calendar year — the latter only for contracts averaging 30 hours per week or fewer. The revision window is defined by Besluit Wfsv art. 2.3 lid 4: the twelve months before termination, or the calendar year, or the whole period if shorter than twelve months. Engines must support reopening filed periods. BENEFIT PAYMENTS FLIP THE OPPOSITE WAY FOR AWF AND AOF. Over WW/ZW/WIA/WAO/WAZO/Toeslagenwet payments the LOW Awf rate applies (Wfsv art. 27 lid 2) but the HIGH Aof rate applies (Wfsv art. 36 lid 4). Getting one of these backwards is a common and silent error. WHK HAS NO NATIONAL RATE AT ALL. It is per-employer, notified by Belastingdienst beschikking or mededeling. Small employers pay a sectoral rate ranging in 2026 from 0,76% (sector 39 Verzekeringswezen) to 6,63% (sector 52 Uitzendbedrijven), with 4,91% (sector 67 Werk en (re)Integratie) the highest outside the temping sector. Large-employer individual rates are bounded at one quarter and four times the average (WGA 0,24%-3,84%; ZW-flex 0,14%-2,24%), with the temping-sector ZW maximum raised to 6,49% — but those bounds constrain individual rates only, not sectoral ones. Wfsv art. 34 lid 2 lets the employer recover up to HALF of the Whk premium from the employee, deducted from NET pay — the one place a nominally employer-only Dutch premium can legitimately appear on a payslip. DEDUCTIBILITY. None of the employee-side statutory levies is deductible: the premies volksverzekeringen are levied on taxable wage jointly with wage tax (there is nothing to deduct), and the ingehouden bijdrage Zvw, where it applies, comes out of net pay. The one item that IS deducted before tax is the employee's occupational pension contribution (omkeerregel) — which is not a State scheme. EMPLOYER SICK PAY IS A MISSING COST, NOT A MISSING CONTRIBUTION. The employer's 104-week statutory obligation to continue paying wages during sickness (BW 7:629, minimum 70% of wage) is mandatory and economically funds the first two years of disability risk, which many other countries fund through an insurance premium. It is not a contribution and so has no place in this table, but any cross-country comparison of Dutch employer burden that omits it will materially under-count the Netherlands. SCOPE EXCLUSIONS. Ufo applies only to public-sector employers. The 4,85% ingehouden bijdrage Zvw does not apply to ordinary employees. The nominal health-insurance premium and the EUR 385 deductible are compulsory but paid privately, never through payroll. Sector premiums (sectorfondsen) were abolished on 1 January 2020 — Wfsv art. 28 has lapsed and Besluit Wfsv art. 2.2a (the separate uitzend sector premium) with it; sector code now matters only for small-employer Whk rates. LIABILITY DOES NOT DEPEND ON NATIONALITY. It depends on insured status: residence in the Netherlands or employment there. Cross-border cases are governed by Regulation (EC) 883/2004 and bilateral treaties; an A1 certificate removes Dutch liability entirely. The 30%-ruling for inbound expatriates reduces taxable wage but does NOT exempt anyone from Dutch social security. Age matters: the AOW premium ceases at AOW age (67 in 2026, and unchanged through 2027), dropping bracket 1 from 35,75% to 17,85%, while Anw and Wlz continue. CREDIT-SPLIT SUBTLETY. The heffingskortingen (general credit, employment credit) reduce the combined bracket-1 levy. Any engine that reports the premie volksverzekeringen separately from the wage tax must apportion each credit between the tax and premium components in proportion to the component rates; failing to do so gives a correct total but wrong sub-totals in statutory reporting. CORROBORATOR TRAP. Several Dutch tax-advisory and payroll-vendor sites report the 2026 first-bracket rate as 35,70%, apparently tracking the Belastingplan 2026 as introduced rather than as amended. The administering authority's own 2026 payroll table gives 35,75%, and its stated composition (17,90 + 0,10 + 9,65 + 8,10) sums to exactly 35,75. Do not "correct" 35,75 to 35,70 on vendor corroboration. SUB-NATIONAL VARIATION: None. All rates, ceilings and thresholds are uniform across the European Netherlands; there is no provincial or municipal variation in social-insurance contributions. The only sub-national-looking variation is SECTORAL, not geographic: the Whk sectoral premium for small employers depends on the employer's sector code (Wfsv art. 95), not on where the employer is located. IMPORTANT SCOPE BOUNDARY: the Caribbean Netherlands — Bonaire (BQ-BO), Sint Eustatius (BQ-SE) and Saba (BQ-SA), the BES islands — are constitutionally part of the Netherlands but run an entirely separate tax and social-insurance system with its own currency (USD), its own statutes and its own Belastingdienst/Caribisch Nederland rate tables ("Rekenregels m.i.v. 1 januari 2026"). None of the values in this record apply there. Anything sourced from belastingdienst-cn.nl is BES data and must never be merged with European-Netherlands data. Aruba, Curacao and Sint Maarten are separate countries within the Kingdom and are out of scope entirely. WHAT WE DO NOT PUT A NUMBER ON: I put no single national number on: (1) the gedifferentieerde premie Whk — it is employer-specific by law (Wfsv art. 38, Besluit Wfsv art. 2.6) and only bounds, sector rates and averages exist nationally, so rate_employer and rate_total are null; (2) the nominale premie zorgverzekering — set by each private insurer, not by the State; (3) bedrijfstakpensioenfonds contributions — compulsory by ministerial verplichtstelling in many sectors but with every rate, franchise and split fixed in the individual fund's regulations. All three are genuinely non-national and nulls are the correct answer. I also do not assert the content of the "Minimumloonsomgrens Whk sector Grootwinkelbedrijf" rule introduced by art. VIII of the 2026 SZW regeling: that article amends the Regeling Wfsv, and wetten.overheid.nl returns HTTP 500 for the Regeling Wfsv (BWBR0018715 likewise 500s), so I could read the amending article's title but not the amended text. Its existence is recorded in the Whk notes; its content is not asserted. I do not assert a 2027 figure for the verplicht eigen risico. Zvw art. 19 lid 7 disapplies the indexation only for the years 2019 through 2026, so on the face of the statute indexation resumes for 2027; separately a bill to reduce it to EUR 165 from 1 January 2027 exists but is still only at Tweede Kamer stage with no Staatsblad publication, and a further 2026 bill going the other way is also before Parliament. The 2027 amount is therefore genuinely undetermined and is refused rather than guessed. FOUR ITEMS THE PREVIOUS VERSION OF THIS RECORD WRONGLY REFUSED are now served, because they are in fact published and I read them: the Wet kinderopvang provision behind the Opslag Wko (art. 1.10 lid 1 and lid 3); the instrument and article fixing the 9,65% Wlz percentage (Regeling vaststelling premiepercentage Wlz, BWBR0041685, art. 1); the Zorgverzekeringswet article fixing the EUR 385 eigen risico (art. 19 lid 1); and the Staatscourant text of Stcrt. 2025, 38055 fixing the Zvw percentages and ceiling, which is reachable at the .html URL even though the extensionless URL times out. ALREADY LEGISLATED, NOT YET IN FORCE: ALREADY FIXED FOR 2027 (verified directly against UWV, "Gedifferentieerde premies WGA en Ziektewet 2027", the nota to the Besluit gedifferentieerde premie Werkhervattingskas 2027, published 15 July 2026): average WGA premium rises from 0,96% to 1,07%; average Ziektewet-flex premium rises from 0,56% to 0,60%. Applying the statutory formula in Besluit Wfsv art. 2.6 lid 6, the large-employer bounds become WGA minimum 0,26% (1/4 x 1,07) and maximum 4,28% (4 x 1,07), and ZW minimum 0,15% and maximum 2,40%. The average premium wage rises to EUR 45.400, moving the small/medium threshold to EUR 1.135.000 (25x) and the medium/large threshold to EUR 4.540.000 (100x); the size test for 2027 uses the premieloonsom in 2025 (t-2). NOTE A CHANGE THE PREVIOUS VERSION OF THIS RECORD MISSED: the special Ziektewet maximum for the sector Uitzendbedrijven FALLS from 6,49% in 2026 to 5,96% in 2027, because it is set at 1,75 x that sector's ZW-flex premium and the sector 52 ZW-flex rate falls from 3,71% to 3,41% (sector 52 WGA also falls, from 2,92% to 3,31% — in fact rises; the 2027 sector 52 pair is WGA 3,31 / ZW 3,41). Also from 1 January 2026 the staartlastvermogen within the Werkhervattingskas was merged with the regular WGA reserve, part of why the average WGA rate rose. ALSO ALREADY FIXED: Besluit Wfsv art. 2.3a, which suspended the 30%-hours Awf herzieningsgrond for the calendar years 2020 and 2021, lapses on 1 January 2027. This is housekeeping — it removes a spent transitional and changes nothing operationally. NOT YET FIXED: the 2027 percentages for AOW, Anw, Awf laag/hoog, Aof laag/hoog, Opslag Wko, Ufo and the Zvw, and the 2027 maximumpremieloon and maximum bijdrageloon/bijdrage-inkomen. The Wlz percentage is the exception — it sits in a standing regulation with no year in it and will remain 9,65% unless that regulation is amended, so do not expect a 2027 Wlz instrument to appear. VERPLICHT EIGEN RISICO 2027 IS OPEN AND MUST BE WATCHED. Zvw art. 19 lid 7 freezes the indexation only "voor de jaren 2019 tot en met 2026". Absent amendment, art. 19 lid 2 and lid 3 revive for 2027 and the EUR 385 would index. A bill to cut it to EUR 165 from 2027 has been through internetconsultatie, ministerraad and the Raad van State but as of August 2026 is still in the Tweede Kamer with no Staatsblad, and a separate 2026 bill proposes raising it instead. Treat the 2027 amount as undetermined until a Staatsblad publication exists. RE-VERIFY DEADLINES. On the normal cycle the VWS regulation setting the Zvw percentages and ceiling appears in early November 2026, and the SZW regulation setting the remaining percentages and the maximumpremieloon appears in the first week of December 2026. Suggested deadlines: 2026-11-15 for the Zvw values, 2026-12-15 for everything else, and 2026-12-31 for the eigen risico. Also re-check the Belastingdienst cijferbijlage in mid-December 2026 and again in January and March 2027, since that document is reissued with corrections — the 2026 edition reached a third issue on 3 March 2026, and its own change log confirms the third issue altered only Tabel 15 (loonkostenvoordelen) while the second issue had corrected the Tabel 9 heading from "Aof en de AWf" to "Aof en Whk"; no rate in this record was touched by either. SOURCING CAVEATS: Confidence is "primary" overall: every rate, ceiling, period maximum and article citation in this record was read by me in the statute, the regulation, the gazette text or the administering authority's own current rate publication during this repair pass. Residual soft spots, all disclosed in the relevant scheme notes or in refused: (a) the content of the Whk "Minimumloonsomgrens sector Grootwinkelbedrijf" rule, because the Regeling Wfsv is unreachable (HTTP 500); (b) the nominal health-insurance premium market range of roughly EUR 142-185 per month, which is insurer data, though the EUR 1.884/year (EUR 157/month) national average is the government's own published figure; (c) I read Regeling zorgverzekering art. 5.2 and 5.4 through the amending regulation and its explanatory note rather than in the consolidated Rzv, which does not load — the amounts and percentages are unambiguous in that text but the surrounding consolidated wording was not seen. One methodological warning for anyone re-verifying this record: WebFetch-style summarisation of wetten.overheid.nl produced FABRICATED article text during this pass — it returned a confident but entirely invented mapping of Zorgverzekeringswet arts. 41-49, including a non-existent "De inhoudingsplichtige houdt de werkgeversheffing in op het loon" and a CAK role that is not in the statute. Every Dutch statutory citation here was instead taken from the raw consolidated HTML fetched directly and stripped locally. Do not accept summarised statute text for this country. Similarly, the Belastingdienst cijferbijlage PDF must be extracted with a table-aware mode. Plain layout extraction of Tabel 10 silently offsets the sector names from their percentages by one row, which is exactly how the original record acquired its wrong Whk range: its two quoted example sectors were right, but the min/max it derived from the mis-aligned columns were wrong. Researched against primary instruments, then attacked by an independent adversarial verification pass which REFUTED the first version on a value. The corrections that pass proved from the instruments have been applied (2026-08-08). Employee and employer shares are stated separately: the employee figure is what leaves the payslip, the employer figure is cost of employment and is not a deduction.

Get it programmatically

curl https://euroref.dev/v1/nl/social-contributions
# $0.005 per call — x402 on Base (USDC). No key, no signup.
# History:    curl https://euroref.dev/v1/nl/social-contributions/history?from=2020-01-01
# Provenance: curl https://euroref.dev/provenance/nl/social-contributions

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