The Tax and Customs Administration has published the Enforcement Plan for Labour Relations 2025. In this document, the Tax Authority outlines how enforcement will be taken up after the enforcement moratorium is lifted from 1 January 2025.
VBAR
In our article Regulatory changes for self-employed workers we told that we explained the impending changes with regard to self-employed people in two well-attended breakfast sessions. This concerns, on the one hand, the Bill VBAR and, on the other hand, the lifting of the enforcement moratorium. The VBAR bill has been given a not too positive advice, raising the question of whether this bill should be tabled in Parliament in this form.
Enforcement moratorium
The enforcement moratorium will still be lifted by 1 January 2025. Several sectors are asking for a delay or the introduction of exceptions, but the government does not seem to be heeding these cries for help. Labour relations will be assessed against the criteria derived from the Deliveroo ruling.
It was still unclear how the Tax Administration will give hands and feet to enforcement in 2025. For that, it was waiting for the Labour relations enforcement plan, 2025 tranche (with subtitle: Enforce without enforcement moratorium), published today.
Clear is what the consequence of lifting the enforcement moratorium is: “Lifting the enforcement moratorium from 1 January 2025 means that, if we find an incorrect qualification of the employment relationship as a result of an audit, from that date we can again impose correction obligations and post-tax assessments, with accompanying tax interest and penalties, under the ‘normal’ rules in payroll tax, without first issuing a direction.”.
In the enforcement plan, the Tax and Customs Administration outlines the ways in which it carries out its supervision, but obviously it does not show the back of its tongue in doing so. This ranges from providing general information to carrying out targeted tax audits.
Soft landing
Politicians have been promised a “soft landing”. This means that the Inland Revenue will impose correction obligations and retrospective assessments, but no further back than 1 January 2025, except in cases of malicious intent or when the Inland Revenue has given the client a direction before that date.
About 2025, no misdemeanour fines will be imposed on parties who have demonstrably actively engaged in the correct qualification of the employment relationship. This applies to both the contractor and the ZZP-er. In addition, at 2025, no default and delinquency penalties will be imposed for qualifying employment relationships.
The Inland Revenue does not investigate whether there is forced self-employment or underpayment. After all, this is not relevant for tax purposes.
Pre-consultation
To streamline pre-consultation on labour relations, the Inland Revenue has launched a request for prior consultation and a pre-consultation checklist which clearly sets out the minimum information required to successfully submit such a request.
The enforcement plan explicitly states that pre-consultation only provides conditional (and therefore not absolute) certainty about the qualification of the working relationship. The conditionality concerns whether the actual performance of the work corresponds exactly to what is described in the request for pre-consultation. Obviously, the Tax Authorities can only determine this afterwards.
Model agreements
Approved model agreements are honoured by the Inland Revenue for the duration of the approval (which duration varies for each model agreement). New approvals (or extensions) are no longer issued (not even via pre-consultation). The Tax Authority emphasises that approved model agreements only provide certainty insofar as the client and contractor actually work as agreed in the model agreement.
Resources
The enforcement plan highlights a number of tools in determining the nature of an employment relationship:
- hetjuistecontract.nl
- web module employment relationship assessment
- belastingdienst.nl/labour-relations
Case studies by profession are available in the form of the previously published brochure.