UK employee working in The Netherlands

Hi and welcome to the Forum.

In response to this and your DM to myself.  This is my opinion, I'm not an employment lawyer.

There is no direct system that enables your company to employ anybody in the Netherlands without that person having a valid work contract and CAO if applicable; such contracts need to be enforceable in a Dutch court of law.  I think you would struggle to do this as a non-Dutch-registered company; my advice would be to speak to your own UK Company Secretary and HR department to get their views on the legality of this under UK employment law.  When I looked at doing this myself (some years ago now), agency contracts were the only way around it and perhaps because of this, they were expensive, so much so in the long-term, it was cheaper and more effective for my then-employer to relocate me and my family back to the UK.  Just working for a UK company from home in the Netherlands was legal as far as the Dutch Belastingdienst were concerned for personal taxation, they would just surcharge me for the social taxes, it never got any further than that as we then decided to move to the UK, you should consider that back then, the UK were part of the EU and cross-border working was a normal way of working for many in the EU.

Freelance contracts are generally not viewed as legitimate in the Netherlands when there is only 1 customer, such people are deemed as being employees of the company.

One major difference between myself (a Brit living in Holland) and your employee is he/she is a Dutch citizen and has rights in Dutch law that I never had; perhaps get them to go and speak to a Dutch employment lawyer and get their views.  I can't believe that you are the only people doing this, so it must be doable.

I hope this helps.

Cynic

Expat Team

Thanks so much