The Dutch 30% ruling becomes a 27% ruling in 2027 — and whether you keep 30% depends on your start date

For years the expat break was simply "30% of your salary, tax-free." That number is now dated. Under the Tax Plan 2025 (Belastingplan 2025), which the Senate (Eerste Kamer) adopted in December 2024, the maximum tax-free allowance drops from 30% to a flat 27% from 1 January 2027. The 30% still applies through 2026, so anyone comparing offers or filing for 2025–2026 uses 30% — but a five-year ruling that runs into 2027 gets re-priced partway through.

This 27% is not the scary scaledown many older guides still describe. An earlier plan (in the 2024 Tax Plan) would have tapered the benefit 30% / 20% / 10% across the five years. That 30/20/10 taper was cancelled and replaced by the single flat 27%. If a guide still mentions 20% or 10% brackets, it is describing a rule that never took effect.

The one input almost every guide skips is the exact date your ruling first applied, because it splits people into three groups. If your ruling started before 1 January 2024, you are grandfathered: you keep 30% for your entire term and stay on the older (indexed) salary norm. If it started in 2024, you keep 30% through 2026 and drop to 27% in 2027. If it started on or after 1 January 2025, you also drop to 27% in 2027 but sit on the higher current salary norm. So two colleagues on identical pay can get different tax-free amounts in 2027 purely because one arrived in December 2023 and the other in January 2024.