The 30% Ruling in 2027: Confirmed Changes and What They Cost You

The Dutch expat ruling — still widely called the 30% ruling, though the Belastingdienst now labels it the expatregeling — is changing in 2027. This is not a rumour or a line in a coalition document: it is published government policy with a transition table, and it lands on 1 January 2027.

What it is not is a single change that affects everyone equally. Whether you lose anything at all depends on when you started using the ruling, so check which row of the table applies to you before drawing conclusions.

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💡 Related: the 30% ruling calculator, 30% ruling extension and the 2024 changes, the 30% ruling explained in full.

The transition table, and how to find your row

This is the part to get right before anything else. Rijksoverheid publishes the transition in three rows, based on when you first used the ruling:

Three observations worth stating plainly. The pre-2024 group is protected on both dimensions: if your ruling was already running by the end of 2023, the table keeps you at 30% with the current salary norm, including after 2027. The 2024 group loses the percentage but not the norm, moving to 27% against the current salary norm. The 2025-onwards group is affected on both.

The relevant date is when you started using the ruling, which follows the decision (beschikking) issued by the Belastingdienst — not when you moved here, and not when you signed a contract. Your beschikking and your payslips together tell you. For how the ruling behaves across a job change or a gap in employment, the 30% ruling extension and 2024 changes article covers the continuity conditions.

The salary norm: what is known and what is not

The ruling has always had an income condition, indexed annually. For 2026 the Belastingdienst states a taxable annual salary above €48,013, with a reduced norm of €36,497 for employees under 30 with a Dutch academic master’s degree or an equivalent degree obtained abroad. Researchers and medical specialists in training are exempt from the income norm.

From 2027, a higher salary norm applies to the group that entered from 1 January 2025. The new norm was set in the law at €50,436, or €38,338 for under-30s with a qualifying master’s degree (Dutch, or an equivalent foreign degree), at 2024 price level and indexed each year (Factsheetbundel pakket Belastingplan 2025, rijksoverheid.nl). The indexed 2027 amounts had not been published on belastingdienst.nl when we checked on 24 September 2026; the Belastingdienst will publish them, and our article on the 2027 salary thresholds will carry them. Until then, treat any precise 2027 figure you see as an estimate.

Practically: if your salary sits just above the current norm, do not assume you are safe in 2027 without checking the published figure when it arrives. Falling below the norm ends the ruling, which is a far bigger event than three percentage points.

What the change costs: a labelled model calculation

The following is a model calculation for illustration only. It uses round numbers, ignores holiday allowance treatment, pension contributions, and any employer-specific arrangement, and it is not a prediction of your payslip.

The ruling allows a portion of your salary to be paid as a tax-free allowance for extraterritorial costs. Move that portion from 30% to 27% and three percentage points of salary shift from tax-free to taxable.

* Capped in practice by the salary norm, see below.

One thing the table deliberately does not show: the salary norm can cap the allowance before the percentage does. The salary that remains taxable after the allowance must stay at or above the norm. At €60,000, 27% leaves €43,800 taxable, which is below even the 2026 norm of €48,013, so in practice the allowance at that salary is limited to what keeps you at the norm, and the 30%-to-27% change costs little or nothing. The percentage change bites fully only at salaries where the reduced salary stays comfortably above the norm; our gross-to-net guide works through a capped example.

The cash effect is the shifted amount times the income tax rate on it. On a €100,000 salary the taxable part stays below €78,426, so the shifted €3,000 falls in the second bracket: at the 2026 rate of 37.56% that is about €1,127 a year (at the 38.16% proposed for 2027 in the Belastingplan 2027 package, about €1,145). Only where taxable income is above €78,426 does the 49.50% top rate apply: on €150,000 the shifted €4,500 costs about €2,228 a year (Belastingdienst tax rates 2026; Fiscale sleuteltabel 2027, checked 29 September 2026). Because the allowance applies to salary up to €262,000 — the Belastingdienst puts the 2026 maximum allowance at €78,600, i.e. 30% of the cap — earners above the cap feel it only up to that ceiling.

To model your own position, use the 30% ruling calculator and the salary after tax calculator, and read the eligibility guide if you are not sure you qualify at all.

What has not changed

Several parts of the ruling stay the same, and they are worth stating.

The five-year duration. Rijksoverheid still describes a maximum of five years of tax-free allowance under the conditions. The cut from eight years to five happened in an earlier reform, not this one.

The basic structure. It remains an employer-applied allowance for extraterritorial costs, requested from the Belastingdienst by employer and employee together and tied to qualifying employment.

The alternative route. Employers can still reimburse actual extraterritorial costs instead of using the percentage, which for people with genuinely high relocation and double-housing costs can produce a better outcome. Run that comparison with an adviser rather than assuming the percentage wins.

What to do before January

Identify your row in the table. Everything else follows from it, and your beschikking date is the anchor.

Ask your employer what they will apply. Ask payroll directly and keep the question factual: which percentage from January, and against which salary norm.

Check your headroom against the norm, especially if you are near the threshold or a change in hours, part-time work or unpaid leave is on the horizon.

Raise it in the salary conversation, if it applies to you. Three points of tax-free allowance is a legitimate input to a normal review — not an entitlement to compensation. See salary negotiation in the Netherlands.

Get advice if the amounts are material — a ruling ending mid-2027, an employer change, cross-border complications. The 30% ruling tax adviser comparison and best tax advisors for expats cover who works in English, and is the 30% ruling still worth it plus the highly skilled migrant visa guide cover the wider package.

My final thoughts

The pattern over the past few years has been steady narrowing: shorter duration, a salary cap, and now a lower percentage. Planning a Dutch career on the assumption that the ruling will look the same in five years is risky.

That said, the 2027 change is limited. If your ruling was running before 2024, the published table leaves you where you are. If it started later, you lose three percentage points of tax-free allowance and possibly face a higher salary norm — meaningful, but not a cliff.

The line worth watching is the salary norm rather than the percentage. Three points of allowance is a manageable dent; falling below the income threshold ends the ruling entirely. We will update this article once the indexed 2027 norms are on belastingdienst.nl.