In Dutch freelance circles, a cold email is circulating. One of those employer-of-record firms, a vendor, warned a UK client that hiring Dutch ZZP’ers was now “extremely high risk.” There was a link to the calendar. The language was thick with urgency. The Dutch government’s own soft-landing enforcement policy, which had been announced weeks earlier, was not mentioned. It’s a brief moment, but it captures the reality of the information landscape surrounding the contractor reform in the Netherlands: it’s loud, occasionally deceptive, and rarely based on what the law actually says.
In actuality, the Netherlands is changing its classification system for independent contractors. For years, the shift has been developing. False self-employment, or “schijnzelfstandigheid,” is the practice of hiring someone who works like an employee but is classified as a freelancer. This practice has become so common that Dutch authorities felt obliged to take action. For years, the Belastingdienst, the Dutch Tax Authority, maintained a moratorium on enforcement, essentially doing nothing while the regulations caught up with reality. On January 1, 2026, the moratorium came to an end. Since then, regulators’ tone has significantly changed.
Bill 36783, which was formally adopted by the Eerste Kamer on June 16, 2026, is the focal point of what follows. Compared to what reformers initially desired, the law is more restrictive. The entire test for figuring out whether a working relationship is truly self-employed or disguised employment would have been rewritten by an earlier, more comprehensive bill called the Wet VBAR. Political pressure from both freelancer organizations and employer associations caused that larger endeavor to fail. A single, focused mechanism—a legal presumption of employment for any contractor making less than about €38 per hour—remains.
In actuality, this results in a substantial change in the burden of proof. In the past, a freelancer had to prove that they were an employee. The new law requires the hiring company, not the employee, to prove that the relationship is truly self-employed if the employee makes less than the threshold. It’s a procedural action, but when tax authorities show up, procedural actions have actual repercussions.
The floor of the threshold itself is movable. As of January 1, 2026, the €38 amount is applicable. By the time the law fully takes effect on January 1, 2027, that amount is anticipated to reach about €39 after indexation, which is now linked to collective bargaining rather than the statutory minimum wage due to a last-minute amendment. Currently, about 150,000 ZZP’ers make less than that amount. The new legal environment is real to them. It will arrive on a predetermined date, with a government deadline that has been made public. Notably, delivery is required in order to receive approximately €600 million in EU Recovery and Resilience funding. There are compelling reasons why the Dutch government should not overlook this.
Even though the immediate risk is lower for freelancers who do sit above the €38 threshold, the overall regulatory posture has changed. The Belastingdienst has changed from taking a hands-off approach to what it refers to as a “soft landing” strategy, which calls for businesses found to be breaking the law to receive instructions and corrections in 2026 rather than immediate fines. That may seem comforting, but keep in mind that corrections may still result in up to five years’ worth of retroactive tax assessments.
A separate bill known as the Zelfstandigenwet, which is presently scheduled for 2028, is moving the deeper reform—a comprehensive statutory framework for categorizing independent work. Policymakers in the Netherlands seem to be balancing the need to prevent workers from being misclassified with the desire to preserve the freelance economy, which has been the foundation of millions of people’s livelihoods. It’s genuinely unclear if they can accomplish both.
It’s difficult to ignore the fact that comparable discussions are taking place throughout Europe. Platform work, gig economy classification, and the same basic question that the Netherlands is currently legislating—when does a freelancer cease to be one—are issues that many nations are debating. For now, the Dutch response is €38 per hour. It’s particular. It can be enforced. Courts and contractors will likely spend years debating whether this is the correct line.
