Assessment of Employment Relationships and Legal Presumption (Clarification) Act (WDBA) postponed?

The Ministry of Social Affairs is intending to have the new Assessment of Employment Relationships and Legal Presumption (Clarification) Act (WDBA) enter into force at least a year later. The reason for this lies in the large volume of comments received further to the internet consultation on this legislation. The Ministry has indicated that it needs this time to properly consider these comments and possibly amend the bill accordingly. It has further been announced that the amended bill will most likely include a transition period of twelve months to enable the parties to get used to the new system. This announcement means that there will very likely be a situation where the Tax and Customs Administration will start enforcing on the basis of the existing legislation and associated case law before the new bill takes effect. In practice this could lead to turmoil and uncertainty.

What should you do now?

If you have people working in your organisation who are self-employed, then now is the time to take stock of who they are and under what conditions they do their work. This will enable you to estimate whether the tax authorities could raise the issue of false self-employment in these cases and want to impose tax corrections. By making an initial inventory and undertaking a risk assessment yourself, it may be possible to introduce risk mitigating measures and thus reduce the threat of a supplementary tax assessment.