WW-premium is an unemployment insurance premium that is part of the so-called employee social insurance. These are the mandatory premiums that you, as an employer, must pay for each employee. They protect your employees from loss of income, for example, in the event of illness or unemployment. The WW-bonus is paid by the employer and is calculated on top of the employee's gross salary. Also called Werkloos premie.
In 2019 year WW- award consisted of two contributions:
- a constant percentage of 3,6% on an employee's gross salary (WW-AWF-premie),
- variable percentage, on average 0,5% - 4%, depending on the sector of activity (sectorpremie). The size of premiums by sector can be found in the table
What changes have occurred in 2020?
In 2020, amendments to the WAB (Wet arbeidsmarkt in balans) law came into force. The government decided to make wages more fair. The idea was as follows - the employer will pay less taxes for an employee with a permanent contract, including this bonus, than for an employee with a temporary contract. An employee with a permanent contract is less likely to be fired, which means that the job loss bonus should be lower.
As a result, the two previous awards WW-AWF-premie and sectorpremie were replaced by one WW-award, but with two tariffs:
– 2,95% for permanent contracts;
– 7,95% for temporary contracts.
Thus, the premium for employees with a permanent contract has decreased (from an average of 4-5% to 2,95%), and for employees with a temporary contract is much higher, from an average of 4-5% to 7,95%. The result is a rather tangible difference of exactly 5%.
For example, if you take a gross salary of 2000 euros, then the employer is obliged to pay 100 euros more monthly per employee, if he is not on a permanent contract. The implication was that such a difference would encourage employers to sign more permanent contracts.
What should an employer do to benefit from 5% of the gross salaries of their employees?
First, you need to check which of the employees you can or should already be given a permanent contract.
Under Dutch law, an employer is obliged to offer a permanent employment contract to an employee after three temporary contracts or after 3 years of employment with one employer. An exception is if there was a break of 6 or more months (the decree is not taken into account).
Often a temporary contract is automatically renewed, and accordingly becomes permanent after 3 years. This option is not suitable for applying a reduced premium rate!
You can start using the reduced premium of 2,95% if your permanent contract is officially approved (vastgesteld), the employee agreed to the proposed conditions and the contract is saved in your database.
The government agreed on a deadline from 01.01.2020/01.04.2020/19 to 01.07.2020/XNUMX/XNUMX to check contracts and approve them. Due to COVID-XNUMX, the deadline has been extended until XNUMX/XNUMX/XNUMX, which means that you still have time to double-check contracts and register them as permanent.
How to approve a permanent contract?
Of course, the most standard way is to print in duplicate and sign by the parties. But due to the COVID-19 situation, many workers do not go to the office or are out of reach at all. How else to approve the contract? In fact, there are a lot of ways:
- send the contract by mail;
- e-mail, sign and scan the contract;
- send a notification to the employee about the conclusion of a permanent contract and obtain his consent. Attention! The e-mail date must be before 01.07.2020;
- use an electronic signature (Nalog.NL provides a service for connecting an electronic signature for your company);
- there are also HR systems within companies where remote signing of contracts is possible.
What to do if the contract is lost in your administration? Or lost by one of the parties?
You need to draw up a letter of addition (aanvulling) in which you confirm the existence of a permanent contract and that in the first half of 2020 you approved it. The same letter must be drawn up if the last contract (or addendum to it) was concluded orally (mondeling arbeidsovereenkomst). If there is no contract, then it must be drawn up and signed.
If you thought about giving or not giving the employee a permanent contract, now you can issue it and date it on January 1, thus adjusting the size of the WW-bonus. It is possible and a date later, but in this case the premium will decrease.
What are the next actions?
After you have checked and determined how many permanent and temporary contracts you have, you need to adjust the WW Prize from the very beginning of the year. If you signed a permanent contract “yesterday” or “tomorrow” with an employee who already worked for you on January 1, 2020, then you can make an adjustment, so the bonus will be 2,95% and will be calculated from January 1, 2020. The accountant or payroll officer will have to adjust it. This adjustment can be made this month in June salary.
Please note that these corrections can be applied to employees who already worked for you on 01.01.2020/31.12.2019/01.01.2020, that is, were listed on XNUMX/XNUMX/XNUMX in your company. To everyone you hired later, you had to immediately issue permanent or temporary contracts. If you took a person from XNUMX/XNUMX/XNUMX for a temporary contract, then you cannot now issue it for a permanent one. But, for example, you can give him a permanent contract from tomorrow and the premium will decrease from now on.
All contracts drawn up in the past or earlier years can be revised retroactively, although the signature of these changes will be in the first half of 2020.
Will you be able to cheat?
The government has put in place protective measures to prevent employer fraud.
Example 1: if you signed up for a permanent contract and fired an employee within the next 2 months, you will have to reverse the adjustment and pay the bonus at a higher rate.
Example 2: you have signed a permanent contract for 8 hours, but in fact a person works 40 hours. Due to the fact that the employee works 30% of the hours specified in the permanent contract, it will be considered that he works according to a flexible schedule and, accordingly, the bonus will be higher, which again will need to be adjusted.
To sum up:
For which employees WW is the premium always low?
- if the employee has a permanent contract (arbeidsovereenkomst voor onbepaalde tijd) and this contract is approved no later than 30.06.2020/XNUMX/XNUMX;
- if the employee is under the age of 21 and works no more than 52 paid hours per calendar month;
- people working at BBL (Beroeps Begeleidende Leerweg). When a person works and studies, he has a contract with an educational-trainee institution;
- if the employee was on a permanent contract, but you fire him and pay benefits or other payments
For which employees WW is the premium always high?
- if the employee has a temporary contract;
- temporary workers with a flexible schedule for various types of contracts (oproep, 0 uren, min-max);
- fictieve arbeidsrelatie, those employees who do not have a real contract on hand, but the tax authorities consider them as employees (freelancers and zzp, who have incorrectly completed the documents, fall into);
- if a contract is concluded with an employee without written approval, regardless of its type;
- uitzendkrachten, temporary workers employed through an employment office;
- if a new employee with a permanent contract, but leaves after 2 months, then you need to adjust for a higher bonus;
Mixed contract.
Such contracts are often concluded, for example at Horeca. If an employee has a permanent contract for a fixed number of hours per week and he also goes to work as needed, then there will be two bonuses. We advise in this case to make two contracts, because on one of them a permanent contract, you can save money. If there is one contract containing a permanent and a non-permanent part, you will have to keep track of all the time so that the non-permanent part does not exceed 30% of the working time from the permanent one. And if there is a violation, make a correction upwards.
If you still have unapproved contracts, and you, for example, accrued a lower premium, then now, if you have not signed a contract, you are required to make an adjustment for a higher premium, necessarily from the beginning of 2020. That is, if you did not have time to sign the contract, you are obliged to pay 5% more. This moment is seriously monitored, and we strongly recommend that you correct and put in order your personnel administration. If you need help, contact Nalog.NL and we will help you.
Publication Date: 26.06.2020
