Fight against fictitious self-employment will be even more active

The Dutch Ministry of Health is working with the Ministries of Social Affairs and Tax to reduce fictitious self-employment in nursing and elderly care. Ministers signed a joint statement with six industry organizations to combat fraud.

What is the problem?

Individual entrepreneurs (eenmanszaak - EMZ) have a number of tax benefits and pay less to various social funds. In an effort to increase profits, unscrupulous employers force employees to quit, register an EMZ and continue to do the same work, but not under a contract of employment, but for the provision of services. As a result of such actions, unscrupulous companies enrich themselves, and the filling of the treasury and social funds falls. The social security of the workers themselves, who have become entrepreneurs involuntarily, also suffers, because the EMZ is not entitled to wages, vacations and sick days. The government seeks to destroy this tax and fee evasion scheme.

What measures are being taken?

While we are talking about the care of the sick and the elderly. The government has noticed that in recent years, a large number of workers in this field have quit their jobs, issued the relevant EMZ and continued to do the same activities. In 2022, the number of self-employed in this sector of the economy increased by 30% and reached 147 people. At the same time, the total number of workers in the sphere has not actually changed and is about 1 million people.

In addition to reducing payments to the budget, this state of affairs increases the burden on those who remain employed. They get a disproportionate number of night shifts, often having to do the hardest work. The reason is that self-employed employees are more free to choose their working hours and tasks.

The main work of the government and industry organizations is to determine the criteria for real self-employment. Once such criteria are developed and approved, there will be a legal basis for checking the EMZ for fictitious status. It is planned to develop a "tax base for ZZP Zorg". Based on the collected data, industry organizations will check the compliance of the EMZ status with the actual duties performed by it.

What can the Dutch EMZ expect?

The self-employed, working in other sectors of the economy, should not relax. The government is already saying that the developments of the Ministry of Health will be used in the future to determine the fictitiousness of entrepreneurship in other areas of activity. 

Everything you wanted to know about sole proprietorship in the Netherlands, but were afraid to ask, you can find out at the webinar, which will be held by the head of Nalog.nl Svetlana Koshek. Sign up for the webinar here to register:.