Your employees receive a Christmas package from you towards the end of the year, and of course you also give such a package to the cleaner as a token of appreciation for his or her work. But the cleaner is not employed by you, but by the cleaning company. Should you still pay income tax on the value of the package or, if you choose to do so, should the package be charged to your free allowance under the work-related costs (WKR) scheme?
The starting point is clear: a Christmas package is a benefit from the employee's employment and must therefore be taxed. It does not matter who the benefit comes from. But the tax does not have to be paid by you. The employer, i.e. for the cleaner the cleaning company, has to do that.
Obviously, the employer can only pay payroll tax on wage items provided by third parties if he knows that his employee has received these wages. In addition to the wages paid or provided by the employer himself, he must therefore remit wage tax in respect of:
- benefits provided by a third party, but commissioned and paid for by the employer;
- benefits provided by another group company, with the knowledge of the employer;
- tips and similar services from third parties.
Wage components received by an employee that do not comply with this are obviously not outside the scope of taxation. The provider and the employer do not have to withhold wage tax, but the employee himself must declare the wage component in his or her income tax return. Formally, the provider of the benefit must declare to the tax authorities the amounts paid to third parties.
Besides (for example) the cleaner, the director-major shareholder (dga) himself is also often not employed by the company providing the Christmas package, but by his personal holding company. The above then obviously applies to the dga as well. Only, the withholding agent (the dga's personal holding company) will generally not be able to maintain not knowing about the salary provided by the operating company.
Many of the almost 1 million self-employed people in the Netherlands will also receive a Christmas package. They must include the value of the package in the result from other work or in the profit from business they (or their B.V.) enjoy as ZZP-er and pay tax on the benefit received via that route.
The Christmas package is, of course, only an example. The rules described above apply to all benefits received by employees and self-employed workers from third parties.