My Dutch Dream

Unfortunately, taxes are a part of life, even in The Netherlands!

This is something that I will have to get to grips with before I move. Probably I will speak to a tax lawyer or accountant because it seems quite complicated, from what I can tell, and I have enough problems filing a tax return here in the UK anyway.

Luckily, the Dutch tax authority, Belastingdienst, have a very good section for prospective immigrants. It seems that there are a few options such as being able to claim full Dutch tax residency for the entire year in which you arrive, if you wish.

Mind you, I found it hard to find any tax rates on the site, they seem to keep those well hidden! Instead, I went to Wikipedia and found this list of tax rates.

At first glance, the income tax rates are incredble! From what I can tell, there is no tax free lower limit (I could be wrong though) and the lower tax rate that starts from €0 is 33.65%. The 41.4% rate kicks in at about €17,000 which is about £13.000!! Jeez those taxes are high!

Maybe they don’t have a sales tax like VAT and this makes up for it but I find this hard to believe.

I think an appointment with a good tax accountant is in order. If my plan to be self-employed works as planned then I will probably want to run a company instead, and it looks like Dutch taxes are lower on dividend income.

Well, more homework to do – who said moving countries was easy?