Borrowing from your own BV: the DGA loan rules and their tax consequences

Where the Line Actually Sits

Every 31 December, the peildatum, the Belastingdienst effectively takes a snapshot: the combined outstanding debt of the DGA and their fiscaal partner to their BV, or to all of their BVs together if there is more than one. Cross a specific threshold on that date and the excess gets treated as a fictief regulier voordeel, a deemed benefit, taxed in box 2 for that year, regardless of whether a single euro of actual dividend was ever paid out.

That threshold is 500,000 euros in 2026, not 700,000. This is worth stating plainly because the confusion around it is genuinely common: the coalition agreement behind the current Dutch government did propose raising the limit to 700,000 euros, and the idea remains under discussion, but as of mid-2026 it has not been written into law. The 500,000-euro figure is the one that actually governs the 31 December 2026 peildatum, and any DGA planning their year-end position around the higher, unenacted figure is planning against a number that simply is not yet real.

The threshold itself is not a borrowing limit. Nothing stops a DGA from owing their BV more than 500,000 euros; the debt above that line is simply what gets taxed, in the year it first appears, while the underlying loan stays exactly where it was, still outstanding, still owed in full. Paying the resulting box 2 tax does not make the debt disappear. What it does do is reduce the verkrijgingsprijs, the acquisition cost, of the DGA's own shares for future box 2 purposes, which prevents the same money being taxed twice if the shares are eventually sold.

There is a genuinely useful mechanism worth knowing that almost nothing else on this topic mentions clearly: once a DGA has already paid box 2 tax on an excess in a previous year, that same threshold effectively rises going forward by the amount already taxed. A DGA who owed 750,000 euros back in 2024, paid box 2 on the 250,000-euro excess that year, and still owes 750,000 euros today faces no fresh tax in 2026, since their effective threshold has already risen to 750,000 euros to reflect what was already settled. Only genuinely new borrowing above that adjusted line triggers anything further. This detail matters enormously for anyone assuming a static 500,000-euro ceiling applies every single year regardless of history.

The eigen woning exclusion trips up more DGAs than any other line in this table. A DGA who borrowed from their BV to buy a home, but never actually completed the notarial hypotheekakte and registered it at the Kadaster, has the full loan balance counting toward the threshold, regardless of what the loan agreement says the money was for. Fixing this requires an actual notary appointment and formal registration, and that process cannot happen on 31 December itself; it needs weeks of lead time. Since box 2 rates sit at the centre of what this threshold actually costs, how much tax you pay covers the fuller Dutch tax picture a DGA is navigating around this.

What Turns a Loan Into a Genuine One

Staying below 500,000 euros solves one problem but not the other. The Wet excessief lenen addresses how much a DGA has borrowed; a completely separate set of rules, the zakelijkheid conditions, address whether what they borrowed even counts as a real loan at all. A 300,000-euro loan sitting comfortably under the threshold offers no protection whatsoever if it fails this second test.

A genuine loan needs a written leningsovereenkomst; a verbal understanding between a DGA and their own BV carries no weight, mainly because it cannot be verified during a boekenonderzoek, an audit, and the agreement itself needs to spell out the principal, the interest rate, the repayment schedule, and any security involved.

Market-rate interest, zakelijke rente, is the condition most often quietly ignored in practice. The rate has to reflect what an actual bank would charge for a comparable unsecured personal loan, benchmarked against market conditions at the time the loan was agreed, and this is typically well above the token rates informally applied inside DGA-BV arrangements. A 300,000-euro unsecured loan carrying 0% or 1% interest simply will not survive scrutiny.

The repayment schedule needs to be realistic rather than theoretical. A loan sitting outstanding for seven years with no repayments made and no plausible route to ever repaying it does not resemble a commercial loan; it resembles money that left the BV for good. An inspector reviewing this will weigh whether the DGA's own income and financial position genuinely support repaying the outstanding balance at all.

Security or collateral matters for anything substantial. A bank lending 300,000 euros to a private individual would typically demand security of some kind, and the total absence of any security on a large DGA loan is exactly the sort of gap the Belastingdienst uses to argue the arrangement never resembled an arm's-length transaction in the first place.

The rekening-courant tends to fail on all four fronts simultaneously: no written agreement, interest calculated on paper at year-end rather than actually charged monthly, no repayment schedule of any kind, and a balance that simply grows year over year without ever being formally reviewed. This combination makes the RC one of the single most audit-visible items sitting in a typical Dutch BV's administration.

Watch out: The Belastingdienst runs an annual kruiscontrole, a cross-check, between the RC balance shown as a vordering, an asset, in the BV's own jaarrekening and the same balance the DGA is required to disclose as a schuld aan eigen BV on their personal IB aangifte. Any meaningful mismatch between these two figures triggers an automatic review, and both documents genuinely need to show the same number.

Understanding what a specific inspector actually looks for during that kind of review is worth reading in full; boekenonderzoek Belastingdienst covers exactly that process.

The Outcome Nobody Budgets For

Exceeding 500,000 euros on the peildatum produces a predictable, contained consequence: box 2 tax on the excess, calculated once, at rates set for that year. Uncomfortable, certainly, but structured and bounded. There is a considerably worse outcome hiding behind this, and it is the one most DGAs never see coming until it lands: the Belastingdienst concluding the loan was never genuinely a loan at all.

Where a loan fails the zakelijkheid test outright, no written agreement, no repayment history, no real interest, no plausible prospect of ever being repaid, the Belastingdienst can reclassify the entire transaction as a disguised dividend, a verkapte dividenduitkering. Once that happens, dividendbelasting at 15% falls due on the BV for the full reclassified amount, alongside box 2 income tax on the DGA for that same full amount, and none of this benefits from the 500,000-euro threshold at all. A DGA carrying 350,000 euros in RC debt that fails this test entirely does not face tax on some modest excess; they face tax on the full 350,000 euros, immediately. The debt itself does not vanish in a civil sense, the DGA still technically owes the BV, but the fiscal hit lands in full regardless.

A related but rarer outcome sees withdrawals reclassified as salary instead. Where a DGA drew money from the BV informally in place of their agreed salary, rather than genuinely borrowing it, the Belastingdienst can treat those withdrawals as disguised remuneration, triggering loonheffingen and exposing the BV to a naheffingsaanslag, a back-assessment, for the payroll tax that should have been withheld from the start.

There is a criminal dimension too, reserved for genuinely deliberate cases: where a DGA structured payments as loans knowing full well they were never going to be repaid, purely to sidestep dividend tax, the FIOD can become involved. This is far from a routine enforcement outcome, but it exists in the legal framework as a real possibility rather than a theoretical one.

Worth noting for context: the Wet excessief lenen itself has faced a legal challenge under the European Convention on Human Rights, on the argument that it taxes a deemed benefit rather than actual income without regard for the taxpayer's genuine ability to pay. Rechtbank Den Haag ruled in 2025 that the law survives this challenge, with an appeal still pending. For now, the law stands, and the current position is that it is legally valid regardless of that ongoing appeal. Since the RC balance sitting inside the jaarrekening has to line up exactly with what the DGA reports personally, annual accounts Netherlands covers how that broader set of figures needs to hang together consistently.

Five Ways to Bring the Balance Down Before Year-End

A DGA who can already see their RC balance heading past 500,000 euros by 31 December has options, and the right one depends on personal income level, the BV's actual distributable reserves, and what other assets might realistically be involved.

The first, and most commonly used, is offsetting a dividend against the debt. The BV declares a dividend, and rather than transferring actual cash, that dividend is formally set off against the outstanding RC balance in the BV's books. The DGA pays box 2 tax on the dividend itself, 24.5% up to 68,843 euros and 31% above that in 2026, but the RC balance drops by exactly the dividend amount. This works cleanly whenever the BV genuinely has the distributable reserves to support it.

The second is raising the DGA's own salary and using the higher net pay to formally repay the balance through an actual bank transfer, not merely an accounting entry. Loonheffingen apply to the additional salary, a real cost, but the RC balance falls proportionally, and this route tends to suit a DGA still sitting in a lower income tax bracket where the marginal cost is more manageable.

The third addresses the eigen woning gap specifically: where part of the RC balance genuinely funded the DGA's home but the hypotheekrecht was never formally put in place, a notary can execute the hypotheekakte and register it with the Kadaster before year-end. Once that formal step is done, the home-related portion drops entirely out of the threshold calculation, with no tax cost attached to the fix itself, only the time and notary fees involved in doing it properly.

The fourth involves the DGA contributing personally owned assets, a vehicle, equipment, property, into the BV at a defensible market valuation, with the RC debt reduced by that same amount. This only works where the BV genuinely has a use for whatever is being contributed and the valuation itself can withstand scrutiny if questioned later.

The fifth applies specifically where the BV also owes the DGA money in the other direction, say for personal expenses the DGA covered on the BV's behalf. Formally documenting a verrekening, an offset, between that credit and the RC debt before 31 December reduces both sides of the ledger at once, provided the paperwork is unambiguous and genuinely completed before the deadline rather than backdated afterward.

None of these five moves happens instantly. A dividend needs a proper board resolution behind it. A hypotheekakte needs a notary's calendar to cooperate, typically weeks rather than days. Any DGA watching their balance climb toward 500,000 euros in October or November should already be having this conversation, not waiting for the accountant's year-end call in December. Since several of these strategies interact with how a broader holding structure is organised, setting up a BV and holding together is worth reading alongside this, and where a resulting dividend pushes a DGA's own tax position for the year, provisional tax assessment Netherlands covers how to spread that impact through the year rather than absorbing it as one lump sum.

Know Your Balance Before the Belastingdienst Does

None of this requires giving up the flexibility the RC genuinely offers. It requires knowing the actual balance at any given moment, having the paperwork that turns an informal arrangement into a defensible loan, and starting the year-end review early enough that a fix can actually be executed rather than merely wished for.

If you want help getting visibility into your current RC position and putting the right documentation in place before 31 December, book a demo and we will walk through your specific numbers together. Our team can also help you incorporate your BV or get bookkeeping and payroll set up so this kind of tracking happens automatically rather than being reconstructed once a year.

FAQs

What is the rekening-courant between a DGA and their BV?

It is an open running account recording money moving both ways between a DGA and their BV outside of salary or dividend. A debit balance means the DGA owes the BV, typically the result of informal withdrawals over time.

What is the Wet excessief lenen?

It is Dutch legislation, in force since 1 January 2023, that taxes a DGA on any combined debt to their own BV or BVs exceeding a set threshold, treating the excess as deemed income in box 2 rather than leaving it as an untaxed loan indefinitely.

What is the €500,000 threshold for DGA loans?

It is the combined debt limit, assessed every 31 December, above which the excess owed by a DGA and their fiscal partner to their BV or BVs gets taxed as box 2 income for that year, regardless of whether an actual dividend was ever paid.

Has the threshold been increased to €700,000?

Not yet. A coalition agreement proposal to raise the threshold to 700,000 euros remains under discussion but has not been enacted into law. The legal threshold governing the 31 December 2026 peildatum is 500,000 euros.

Does a home loan from the BV count toward the €500,000 threshold?

Only if no formal hypotheekrecht was established. A home loan properly secured through a notarial mortgage deed registered at the Kadaster is excluded from the threshold; without that formal step, the full balance counts.

What interest rate must a DGA pay on a loan from their BV?

A rate reflecting what an independent bank would charge for a comparable unsecured personal loan at the time the loan was agreed. A rate significantly below that market benchmark signals a non-arm's-length arrangement.

What happens if the loan is not properly documented?

The Belastingdienst can reclassify it as a disguised dividend or, less commonly, as disguised salary, applying tax to the full amount involved rather than just any excess above the €500,000 threshold.

What is the difference between the Wet excessief lenen and herclassification as dividend?

The Wet excessief lenen taxes only the amount exceeding €500,000, leaving the underlying loan intact. Herclassification as a dividend can apply to the entire loan balance, regardless of size, where the loan fails the basic zakelijkheid conditions altogether.

How does the DGA disclose the RC debt in their IB aangifte?

As a schuld aan eigen BV, a debt to their own BV, and this figure must match exactly what the BV's own jaarrekening records as a vordering on the DGA, since the Belastingdienst cross-checks the two.

What are the five ways to reduce the RC balance before 31 December?

Offsetting a declared dividend against the debt, raising DGA salary and using the net proceeds to formally repay the balance, formalising a hypotheekrecht for any home-related portion, contributing personal assets into the BV at market value, and formally offsetting any amount the BV separately owes the DGA against the outstanding debt.