If you’ve been reading about labour law or allowances for students, you might have come across the word loonheffingskorting. If you don’t speak Dutch, this word might be quite intimidating or confusion and with good reason! Sometimes, Dutch websites aren’t that detailed and you're probably sick and tired of using Google Translate for everything. Loonheffingskorting is Dutch for "payroll tax deduction", which we’ve talked a whole lot about. What does payroll tax reduction or loonheffingskorting, mean for you as an employee? Let’s find out…
What is Loonheffingskorting All About?
Payroll tax reduction (direct translation: korting op je belasting) basically means that you, as an employee, are able to get a rebate or discount, on your taxes. Less tax is paid by your employer, and you get more pay in your wages. What this means is that your employer takes the general tax discount and labour discount into consideration; these discounts are termed the payroll tax deduction. This is all geared towards students who work while they study and who make additional earnings.
How Can I Get it?
If you work as a student (loonheffing student), then you are automatically entitled to a discount on your tax. Sweet, right? In order to get this discount, you need to ask for it from your employer or benefit agency paying your Dutch payroll. You then need to fill out the form loonheffingsformulier ‘Model return data for payroll fees’, which you can get from your employer.
If you are working for more than one employer at the same time, you can only ask one of them for payroll tax reduction. Make sure you don’t apply for both because then you might have to pay back the tax later. On the bright side, if you work with multiple employers during the year, you can apply for payroll tax reduction with each of them.
When you apply for loonheffingskorting, your employer will need a few bits of information from you. This includes:
- Your name, initials, and date of birth
- BSN number (citizen service number) that you get when you register at a Dutch municipality or city hall
- Your address, postcode, and city or town
- And your request form for payroll tax reduction
Easy, right? Then, your employer takes care of the rest!
You can find the form here, which you can download and then fill out on your computer.
As you can see, loonheffingskorting is actually a really simple process, and takes almost no time at all to complete! If you want, you can read about payroll tax reduction in more detail, where we go through all the stops and find out what it means for both employer and employee.
