The continuous reports about the DBA legislation enforcement being postponed until later dates may have lulled many companies and self-employed consultants into a false sense of security about their position and reassurance about maintaining the status quo.
Unknown to many, the Dutch tax office has implemented and carried out a monitoring audit of companies using self-employed consultants.
During 2018 they have visited 104 companies across different trade sectors and established that over half of these companies are not operating correctly when engaging self-employed consultants.
12 of these companies will be faced with follow-up audits because the tax office has strong indicators to suspect malicious intent in the way these companies make use of self-employed individuals.
Malicious intent
Although the enforcement of the DBA legislation is postponed, the tax office will make exceptions in cases where companies are showing the so-called “malicious intent” in hiring self-employed consultants.
The terms refer to practises of hiring contractors as self-employed even though they should actually be classified as employed labour by not meeting the criteria for self-employment.
This goes to show that all parties should be aware of the rules and acting accordingly well before the tax office begins actual enforcement of the DBA.