How Much Tax Do You Pay as a Freelancer in the Netherlands in 2026?

You charge €75 an hour, you’ve had a good year, and then comes the question that quietly worries every freelancer: how much of this do I actually get to keep?

The honest answer is that “how much tax do you pay as a ZZP’er in 2026” has no single number. It doesn’t depend on your revenue, but on your profit, and on a chain of deductions that apply in a fixed order. Below, I work through that chain four times, from revenue to what’s left, using 2026 figures.

You pay tax on your profit, not your revenue

The first mistake is baked into the question itself. You don’t pay tax on what clients pay you, but on your taxable profit: revenue minus your business costs.

Earn €60,000 with €6,000 in costs (bookkeeping, insurance, tools, part of your phone bill), and your taxable profit is €54,000. That’s the figure the tax authority works with, not the €60,000.

And the tax authority applies a fixed order. That order matters, because every step changes the base for the next one.

The deduction chain, in order

This is the chain exactly as the Belastingdienst applies it. What matters most is the direction:

Revenue
− business costs
= taxable profit

− zelfstandigenaftrek / entrepreneur deduction (€1,200 in 2026)
= profit after entrepreneur deduction

− MKB-winstvrijstelling / profit exemption (12.70%)
= taxable income (Box 1)

→ Box 1 tax bands
− tax credits
+ ZVW healthcare contribution (4.85%)
= what you actually pay

Two things trip people up.

The 12.70% MKB profit exemption is calculated on your profit after the entrepreneur deduction, not on your full profit. And the entrepreneur deduction only applies if you meet the 1,225-hour urencriterium; the MKB exemption applies to every self-employed taxpayer, hours or no hours.

The ZVW contribution is the layer most people forget. It isn’t part of your income tax; it comes on top, 4.85% of your taxable profit. Leave it out of your calculation and you’ll structurally set aside too little.

Four worked examples: from revenue to take-home

Enough theory. Here’s the chain, worked out four times with 2026 parameters. I’m assuming freelancers who meet the urencriterium (so the entrepreneur deduction applies), with costs around 10% of revenue. Figures are rounded to the nearest euro.

Profile 1 – €30,000 revenue, €3,000 costs

What’s left: roughly €25,900 net, an effective rate of about 4%. At this level, the general tax credit (max €3,115) and the labour tax credit (max €5,685) together outweigh income tax itself: you’re effectively only paying the ZVW contribution. That’s not luck; that’s the system going easy on low profits.

Profile 2 – €60,000 revenue, €6,000 costs

Net comes out around €42,400, an effective rate of about 22% on profit. Here the credits are already shrinking: the general tax credit starts phasing out above €29,736, so the rate climbs faster than the bracket percentage alone would suggest.

Profile 3 – €90,000 revenue, €9,000 costs

Net around €56,100, effective rate about 31%. The general tax credit is nearly gone here and the labour credit is phasing out too. A large share of your profit now falls into the second band (37.56%).

Profile 4 – €120,000 revenue, €12,000 costs

Net around €69,700, effective rate about 35%. Your taxable income now reaches the top band (49.50%, above €78,426), the general tax credit is at zero, and the ZVW contribution is at its cap of €3,851.

What the table shows (that most blog posts don’t)

Line up the four effective rates, roughly 4%, 22%, 31% and 35%, and it’s immediately obvious why “set aside 30%” is bad advice. At €30,000 profit you’d be reserving far too much. At €108,000, just slightly too little.

But there’s a second number that matters more, and no table gives it to you: the tax on your next euro.

Your average rate and your marginal rate aren’t the same thing. In Profile 1, the average rate is 4%, but as soon as you earn a few thousand euros more, the credits phase out differently and that extra profit gets taxed much harder. From roughly €46,000 in profit, where the labour tax credit starts phasing out and you’re in the second band, every additional €1,000 of profit costs you around €491 in combined tax and ZVW. That’s a marginal rate of nearly 49%.

This is your marginal tax rate: the rate you pay on your next euro of profit, including the phase-out of credits and the ZVW layered on top. It’s why one more project at the end of a good year yields less than you’d hope, and it’s exactly the number you need to decide whether that project is worth taking.

It’s also why your Net Effective Rate says so much more than your hourly rate: tax is one of the three layers that erode what you actually charge.

One common mistake: disability insurance and pension

One more thing, because it trips people up constantly. Your AOV (disability insurance) premium and your pension contributions are not business costs. They don’t reduce your profit.

They’re personal deductions that come off your taxable income only after the MKB exemption, a different line further down the chain. Deduct them from your profit by mistake, and the 12.70% exemption eats part of the benefit you’d otherwise have kept. The order isn’t a technicality; it costs or saves you real money.

Don’t guess — calculate it

A good rule of thumb for 2026: don’t fix your effective rate at some flat percentage, set it to what the chain actually produces for your profit. Four profiles in, you now know it isn’t 30%. It’s a sliding scale from roughly 4% to 35%, plus a marginal rate that creeps toward 49% once you’re earning well.

Want to run your own revenue through this chain? The free tax tool works the whole sequence (entrepreneur deduction, MKB exemption, tax bands, credits, ZVW) instantly, with no account.

Don’t want to do the math by hand? You don’t have to. Peil calculates your tax continuously from your actual revenue and costs, including the entrepreneur deduction, the MKB exemption, the bands, the credits and the ZVW. You see not just what you owe this year, but what your next euro of profit really costs you.

See what you’re reserving for tax this year. Peil works it out for you, free to try.

Figures in this article are rounded to the nearest euro and based on 2026 tax parameters. Always check your own situation against your provisional and final assessment: someone past state pension age, a starter with the startersaftrek, or someone with Box 3 assets will calculate differently.