The Dutch proposal rewards real independence, while current payroll exposure keeps running.
A founder has a reliable freelancer who knows the customers, joins the weekly planning meeting and appears on the same roster each Monday. The monthly invoice is correct. The contract calls the person independent. Yet the working day looks increasingly similar to that of an employee.
This is the practical tension behind the proposed Zelfstandigenwet, opened for consultation on 1 October. The proposal introduces two tests and a future safe harbour for genuine self-employment. Consultation runs through 29 October 2026, and the intended starting date is January 2028.
That sounds like promised clarity. I read it more strictly. The Netherlands is offering a clearer route to independence, but only where the entrepreneur, the assignment and the daily reality support the same conclusion. The business cannot borrow that future clarity for arrangements operating today.
The law starts with the working relationship
Dutch Civil Code article 7:610 remains the legal starting point for an employment contract. Its core elements are work, wages and authority. A contract heading, Chamber of Commerce registration or VAT invoice does not settle whether those elements exist.
The Supreme Court made the wider method clear in the Deliveroo ruling of 24 March 2023, ECLI:NL:HR:2023:443. Classification depends on all relevant circumstances taken together. The court’s approach leaves room to consider how the work is organised, how payment works, whether personal performance is expected, how embedded the worker is, which commercial risks exist and whether the person behaves as an entrepreneur in the market.
The proposed Zelfstandigenwet builds a more explicit structure around that reality. Its zelfstandigen-toets looks at the entrepreneur, including invoicing, KVK registration, the number of clients and arrangements for business risks. Its werkrelatie-toets examines the individual assignment, including freedom to organise the work and performance for the worker’s own account and risk.
Someone who meets both tests and works accordingly in practice would enter the proposed safe harbour. The final weighting and operation still depend on the legislative process. What is already clear is the direction: independence must be visible beyond the signature page.
Enforcement did not pause for consultation
The Belastingdienst ended the enforcement moratorium on 1 January 2025. Where it finds sham self-employment, it can impose payroll-tax corrections and additional assessments without first issuing an instruction. The normal lookback reaches to 1 January 2025. A longer period can apply in cases involving bad faith or an earlier instruction that was not followed.
From 2026, deliberate-offence penalties may also apply in relevant cases, although the Belastingdienst says it will not impose default penalties during 2026. A softer landing is not an exemption. It is still necessary to qualify the relationship correctly.
Another date is closer than 2028. Official entrepreneur guidance says the adopted low-rate employment presumption takes effect on 31 December 2026, using a reference amount around €38 per hour. When a worker invokes that presumption, the client must demonstrate that no employment contract exists. For businesses built around lower-paid contractor capacity, the burden of the dispute will shift in a meaningful way.
Meanwhile, the market is already moving. CBS counted nearly 1.5 million people with self-employment as their main job in the second quarter of 2026. The number of zzp workers had fallen for six consecutive quarters and stood 131,000 below the fourth quarter of 2024. Not every person leaving zzp work enters permanent employment. Capacity may move into flexible payroll, disappear from the sector or become more expensive.
The roster reveals what the contract conceals
Return to the freelancer in the Monday meeting. Necessary coordination does not automatically create employment. A construction site needs access rules and safety instructions. A care provider needs protocols and reliable handovers. A software project needs deadlines and system access.
The harder question is who controls the commercial shape of the work. Can the contractor decide how the result is produced? Is payment linked to an assignment or closely modelled on wages? Can the person serve other clients, carry a genuine risk of loss and organise replacement where appropriate? Or does a manager set the hours, approve absence, prescribe the method and treat the worker as ordinary capacity?
A sensible company review crosses departmental borders. The contract may sit with procurement, invoices with finance and daily instructions inside operations. Payroll may never see the relationship. Yet no single document carries the answer.
The most useful review compares the assignment brief, rate, invoices, messages, rosters, access records and actual management practice. It also identifies which customer prices depend on invoice-based labour. If reclassification would destroy the margin on a project, that is not merely a tax concern. It is a pricing and governance weakness that existed before any assessment arrived.
Independence carries its own costs
The proposal also treats protection against entrepreneurial risks as part of the entrepreneur test. That fits the government’s separate plan for basic disability insurance for self-employed workers. Dutch policy is framing independence as a real commercial position, with responsibility for interrupted income and other business risks, not simply freedom from payroll.
For the founder in our opening scene, the honest choice may be to redesign the assignment, preserve genuine entrepreneurial room or discuss employment. The right answer depends on the facts. What should disappear is the comfortable middle in which the company purchases labour through invoices while directing it as employment.
The Zelfstandigenwet may eventually provide a clearer harbour. A harbour still requires a vessel capable of reaching it. Until then, the strongest position is neither a clever label nor a thicker contract. It is a working relationship whose price, authority, risks, records and daily behaviour tell one credible story.
If your freelancer arrangements combine contractual independence with employee-like control, review the working reality before payroll exposure grows.
The data, sourcing, and analysis behind this article were conducted by Paolo Maria Pavan. AI was not used to identify sources, build the factual basis, or produce the analytical judgment contained here. AI was used only as a drafting aid. The final English text was personally reviewed, edited, and approved by Paolo Maria Pavan before publication.
References
- Zelfstandigenwet biedt meer duidelijkheid en erkenning voor zzp’ers | Rijksoverheid.nl
- Belastingdienst - Current tax enforcement and payroll exposure
- Belastingdienst - 2026 enforcement approach
- Rijksoverheid - The surviving low-rate presumption track
- CBS - Latest observed movement out of self-employment
- UWV - Labour-market capacity and sector pressure
- Rijksoverheid - Entrepreneurial risk protection and disability coverage
- Rijksoverheid - Veelgestelde vragen schijnzelfstandigheid
