Expertise requirement

You may apply the 30%-facility for an employee that comes to the Netherlands subject to conditions including the employee's possession of a specific expertise. The demonstration of this specific expertise is governed by an income standard that is indexed once a year. In 2023, an employee has a specific expertise when the employee receives taxable annual wages of at least € 41,954 exclusive of the specific exemptions. For academic employees who have achieved a Dutch master title or an equivalent title abroad, and who are younger than 30, the income standard is € 31,891 exclusive of the specific exemption.

An exception is made for employees who carry out scientific research at specific institutions and physicians training to become specialists: they do not need to comply with an income standard.

Scarcity requirement

In exceptional situations your employee will not only need to comply with the income standard, but will also need to comply with a scarcity requirement: your employee's expertise must be unavailable or virtually unavailable on the Dutch labour market. This is the case when virtually all employees in a specific sector comply with the income standard, such as professional footballers. You will then also need to demonstrate the scarcity of your employee's expertise.

Assessment of the requirement of expertise and scarcity

When assessing compliance with the expertise and scarcity requirement we take into account the following 3 factors:

• the employee's level of education
• the employee's experience of relevance to the position
  When an employee has worked in a comparable position for more than 2.5 years then we assume that the employee has experience of relevance to the position.
• the relationship between the remuneration level for the position in the Netherlands and the remuneration level in the employee's country of origin
  This is assessment is made on the basis of the principle that the net remuneration for the position in the employee's country of origin is not lower than the net remuneration for the position in the Netherlands. The reimbursement for the extra costs incurred for a temporary stay away from the country of origin (the extraterritorial costs) is not then taken into account.