BV Formation
Relocating Your Business to the Netherlands: A Practical Guide for EU and Non-EU Founders
Relocating your business to the Netherlands as an EU or non-EU founder? See immigration routes, setup order, housing reality, and first-year tax.
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16 mins
Intro
Moving a business, and yourself, to another country is rarely a single decision. It is four decisions made in sequence: whether the Netherlands is actually the right answer, what your specific immigration route looks like, what needs setting up and in what order, and what your first year actually costs once tax is factored in. Most guides answer these in the order Dutch bureaucracy processes them rather than the order a founder actually thinks through them. What follows tries to do the opposite.
Why the Netherlands, and Is It Still the Right Answer in 2026?
The Netherlands competes for relocating founders mainly against Ireland, Germany, and Estonia, and the case for choosing it in 2026 rests on four things that have not weakened. EU market access from a genuinely central geographic position. An English-first business environment that removes the language barrier which makes Germany difficult for anyone who does not already speak German fluently. The 30% ruling, which still meaningfully reduces the effective tax rate on salary for qualifying incoming founders. And a well-established ecosystem of notaries, accountants, and banks that processes international company formations efficiently and without much friction.
None of that means the decision is uncomplicated. The housing market is genuinely difficult right now, difficult enough that it deserves its own section further down rather than a passing mention here. Free-sector rental supply dropped by roughly 40% following legislative changes in 2024 and 2025, and it has not recovered. Founders who plan their move around the company setup timeline alone routinely discover that the apartment search adds two to four months they never budgeted for. The corporate tax environment is competitive without being exceptional: VPB runs at 19% on the first 200,000 euros of profit and 25.8% above that, which compares favourably to Germany and France but less favourably to Ireland's flat, lower rate. And Dutch employment law protects employees in ways that matter considerably once a founder starts hiring locally, even if that is not the immediate concern for someone still setting up their own residency.
The Dutch BV itself deserves a specific mention here, separate from the country-level case. The Flex BV reform of 2012 removed the minimum capital requirement entirely; the statutory minimum is now one cent. Combined with straightforward incorporation through any Dutch civil-law notary, this makes the BV the default structure for most relocating founders regardless of where they hold a passport. Working out whether that structure genuinely fits your situation, rather than defaulting to it purely because it is the obvious choice, is worth doing properly before anything else; starting a company in the Netherlands covers that groundwork, and BV or sole trader covers the alternative worth ruling out first.
Your Immigration Route Depends on Your Passport
The single most important variable in planning a move to the Netherlands is citizenship, not business type, not investment level, not sector. EU, EEA, and Swiss citizens have the right of free movement and can operate a Dutch BV without any immigration approval whatsoever. For everyone else, the path to legally living and working in the Netherlands as a business founder depends heavily on where, specifically, that passport was issued.
For EU, EEA, and Swiss founders, the process is genuinely simple. Register with the local gemeente within five days of establishing a residential address, and that registration automatically generates a BSN, the personal identifier needed for everything from opening a bank account to filing a tax return. No work permit. No residency application. No points system to satisfy. The main administrative task is the BV incorporation itself, which can happen remotely, before or after arrival, without much coordination required between the two.
For US, Japanese, and Bolivian founders, bilateral friendship treaties open a considerably simpler route than the standard non-EU process. The Dutch-American Friendship Treaty, DAFT, is by far the most widely used. It requires US citizenship, a minimum investment of 4,500 euros in the Dutch business, and genuine commercial activity between the US and the Netherlands. The IND asks for none of the usual gatekeeping: no business plan requirement, no innovation scoring, no points system. The 2026 application fee sits at 423 euros for the main applicant, with the permit valid for two years and renewable, subject to the IND confirming the business stayed active and the invested capital remained inside it. The one hard restriction worth flagging clearly: DAFT covers self-employment only, and cannot be combined with Dutch employment at the same time.
Founders from every other non-EU country face the self-employed visa, the zelfstandigenvergunning, which runs on a points-based assessment by the IND with input from RVO. That assessment weighs added value to the Dutch economy, personal competence and track record, and the viability of the business plan submitted. This route has a lower approval rate and a considerably less predictable timeline than DAFT, and founders with an existing business of some real scale, plus a clear proposition for the Dutch market specifically, are meaningfully stronger candidates than someone starting entirely from a blank page.
There is a fourth route worth knowing about even though it rarely suits a brand-new founder: a DGA can, in principle, sponsor themselves as a kennismigrant through their own BV, provided that BV holds Recognised Sponsor status, Erkend Referent, from the IND. The practical obstacle here is real and underappreciated. A new BV with no balance sheet and no trading history often fails the stability assessment outright, and the application itself takes four to six months to process. This route tends to work better for founders who have already been operating their Dutch entity for at least a year, not for someone incorporating and immigrating simultaneously.
Watch out: Incorporating a Dutch BV and obtaining the right to live and work in the Netherlands are two entirely separate legal processes. A BV can be incorporated remotely without the founder ever setting foot in the country. But living in the Netherlands as a non-EU national while running that BV requires immigration approval that runs on its own independent timeline. Start both processes in parallel from day one, not one after the other.
Understanding the costs and timeline of incorporation itself, separate from any immigration question, is worth reading alongside this; setting up a BV and holding together covers that groundwork for founders building a slightly more complex structure from the outset.
The Operational Setup in the Right Order
Most relocation guides describe what needs doing. Very few address the sequencing problem underneath it, and sequencing turns out to matter more than most founders expect. Certain registrations genuinely depend on others being in place first, and doing them out of order, incorporating before securing a business address, applying for a bank account before the BSN exists, registering for payroll before the loonheffingennummer has actually been issued, produces delays that compound against each other rather than simply adding up.
The BV comes first in the legal sense, and it can be incorporated remotely via a Dutch notary using a power of attorney if the founder is not yet physically in the country. The notary files the KvK registration at the same time, and the KvK number is typically issued within a few working days of the deed being signed. Every subsequent registration depends on having that number in hand. The BV also needs a Dutch business address from the very first day; if the DGA has no physical office yet, a registered address service handles this for somewhere between 50 and 200 euros a month, which is a small cost against the alternative of delaying incorporation entirely.
Municipality registration comes next, and it covers the personal side of the move rather than the corporate one. Registering at the gemeente generates the BSN, the identifier needed for a personal bank account, payroll, government services generally, and, notably, the 30% ruling application itself. EU founders should handle this within five days of establishing a residential address. Non-EU founders may need immigration approval sorted before they can register as an official resident at all, which is exactly why the two tracks need to run in parallel rather than in sequence.
The Belastingdienst registrations run alongside all of this, and they are more specific than they first appear. VPB registration happens automatically the moment a BV lands on the KvK register. BTW registration is separate, and only required if the BV will actually supply goods or services subject to VAT; it produces the BTW identification number. Payroll registration, aanmelding loonheffingen, has to happen before the very first employee or DGA salary payment can be processed, and it produces the loonheffingennummer that payroll runs on.
The business bank account is the step founders most consistently underestimate for how long it takes. Traditional Dutch banks run their own identity and WWFT screening, and that typically takes two to four weeks after documentation goes in. An NL IBAN matters commercially too, for direct debit mandates, for iDEAL payments, and simply for client trust when an invoice lands with an unfamiliar foreign account number attached. Fintech providers such as Neno, which bundles the business account together with bookkeeping and payroll on one platform, typically finish account opening considerably faster while still issuing a genuine NL IBAN. For a founder who needs to be operational quickly rather than waiting weeks on a traditional bank's back office, that speed is worth weighing seriously against a bigger name.
Key takeaway: The two processes that take the longest, and cannot be sped up simply by spending more money, are immigration approval for non-EU founders and finding housing. Both deserve to start earlier than feels necessary. Company incorporation, KvK registration, and the Belastingdienst registrations are comparatively fast once the paperwork is actually in order.
Getting the KvK number itself right, and understanding exactly what it unlocks downstream, is worth a closer look; getting your KvK number covers that specific step in more detail.
The Housing Problem Nobody Warns You About
The Dutch rental market in 2026 is the single most significant practical obstacle facing relocating founders, and it receives almost no attention in any company formation guide anywhere. Legislative reforms in 2024 and 2025 changed rent regulation in ways that pushed roughly 40% of free-sector rental properties off the market entirely, as landlords sold up or converted their portfolios into something else. What remains operates on a very different tenant-selection dynamic than most founders expect walking in.
Landlords in Amsterdam, Rotterdam, Utrecht, and The Hague now field multiple applications for every available property, and they screen heavily on income source and stability rather than simply on ability to pay. A Dutch permanent employment contract is the strongest possible signal a landlord can see. A newly incorporated BV with no Dutch financial history whatsoever, which describes essentially every relocating founder during their first few months, sits near the weakest end of that same scale. The standard response from landlords is a higher deposit, a longer prepayment period, six to twelve months upfront is not unusual for international applicants specifically, or simply rejection in favour of a candidate holding an employment contract instead.
A few strategies genuinely help here. Arriving with corporate housing or a serviced apartment booked for the first 60 to 90 days buys real breathing room to search properly rather than under pressure. A Dutch relocation agency with existing landlord relationships can sometimes provide income guarantees or references that a founder cannot produce alone. Looking slightly outside the obvious cities, Haarlem, Delft, Breda, Eindhoven, tends to open up a noticeably less competitive market where international professionals are far less concentrated. And simply asking the BV's own notary or accountant for an introduction to a local property manager can surface options that never make it onto the major listing sites at all.
The financial planning matters as much as the search strategy. NordicHQ's 2026 DAFT guide recommends a total liquidity buffer of roughly 100,000 euros for a viable first year, factoring in housing costs, setup costs, and living expenses for the stretch before the business itself starts generating meaningful income. That figure runs considerably higher than most incorporation guides suggest, mainly because those guides tend to assume housing is easily found at the advertised rate, which, in 2026, it generally is not. Since the business banking side of this, particularly getting a genuine NL IBAN sorted early, also affects how smoothly rental deposits and direct debits actually process, do you need a business bank account for a BV is worth reading alongside the housing search itself rather than treating the two as unrelated.
Your First-Year Tax Position
A relocating founder who incorporates a Dutch BV in 2026, draws the mandatory DGA salary of 58,000 euros, qualifies for the 30% ruling, and plans to take 50,000 euros in dividends at year-end has three separate tax obligations, and all three interact with each other in ways worth understanding before the money actually moves.
The first layer is the DGA salary and the loonheffingen withheld on it. Every DGA has to draw at least the gebruikelijk loon, 58,000 euros gross in 2026, and the BV withholds payroll tax on that salary monthly. A word of caution on the ruling's rate is worth being precise about here, since it is commonly misreported: for a ruling taking effect in 2026, the rate remains a flat 30%, not 27%. The reduction to 27% only applies to rulings that first take effect from 1 January 2027 onward; anyone whose ruling starts before that date keeps 30% for their full five-year duration, unaffected by the later change. On a 58,000-euro gross salary, that means roughly 17,400 euros is treated as a tax-free reimbursement for extraterritorial costs, materially reducing the effective income tax rate on the whole package.
The second layer is VPB on whatever profit the BV generates after deducting that salary as a business cost. A BV bringing in 120,000 euros in revenue with 58,000 euros paid out in salary has roughly 62,000 euros of taxable profit before other costs are even factored in, which lands entirely inside the 19% bracket for VPB of approximately 11,780 euros.
The third layer is box 2 tax on the dividend itself. The 50,000 euros taken as a dividend is taxed on the DGA's personal return at the box 2 rate, 24.5% on the first 67,000 euros in 2026, rising to 31% above that threshold; on 50,000 euros, that comes to 12,250 euros. The 30% ruling has no bearing here at all; it applies exclusively to the salary component, never to dividend income.
One further wrinkle deserves a direct mention because it catches people out specifically around this year. The partial non-resident status that let earlier ruling holders exclude foreign box 2 and box 3 assets from Dutch taxation was abolished for new applicants from 1 January 2025, but a transitional arrangement lets founders who already held the ruling before 2024 keep using that partial non-resident status through the end of 2026. After that date, full Dutch tax residency applies across every box without exception. Anyone mid-ruling who structured their finances around that partial exemption should sit down with a tax advisor well before the transition actually closes, not after.
EU founders relocating while keeping meaningful ties to their home country face a separate, related question: where they become tax resident is not automatically wherever the BV happens to be incorporated. A DGA who registers a Dutch BV but spends most of the year somewhere else may not be Dutch tax resident at all, and could face overlapping obligations in both countries depending on the specific bilateral tax treaty involved; the 183-day rule is the commonly cited threshold, though treaty details vary and genuinely matter here. Understanding both the salary-versus-dividend trade-off and the broader tax picture is worth doing before the first payment goes out, not after; DGA salary vs dividend and how much tax you pay both cover pieces of this picture in more depth.
Get Your Move Structured Before You Land
Relocating a business to the Netherlands genuinely rewards founders who sequence things correctly and start the slow parts, immigration and housing, well before they feel urgent. The fast parts, incorporation, KvK registration, the Belastingdienst filings, tend to look after themselves once the paperwork is in order, and that asymmetry is worth planning around from day one rather than discovering it under pressure.
If you want your incorporation, business banking, and payroll set up together from the start rather than stitched across separate providers while you are also dealing with immigration and housing, book a demo and we will walk through how Neno's bundled setup works for your specific situation. Our team can also help you incorporate your BV directly, or get bookkeeping and payroll running correctly from your very first month in the Netherlands.
FAQs
Do I need to be a Dutch resident to set up a Dutch BV?
No. A Dutch BV can be incorporated remotely through a notary using a power of attorney, and the founder never needs to enter the Netherlands to complete that step. Living and working from the Netherlands afterward is a separate legal question entirely.
What is the difference between EU and non-EU founders in the Netherlands?
EU, EEA, and Swiss citizens have the right of free movement and can operate a Dutch BV and live in the Netherlands without any immigration approval. Non-EU founders need a specific immigration route, such as DAFT, the self-employed visa, or a kennismigrant sponsorship, depending on their nationality and situation.
What is the DAFT visa and who qualifies for it?
DAFT is a simplified self-employment permit available to US, Japanese, and Bolivian nationals under bilateral friendship treaties. It requires a minimum investment of 4,500 euros in a genuine Dutch business, with no business plan or points-based assessment required, though it covers self-employment only.
Can I incorporate a Dutch BV remotely?
Yes. A Dutch notary can complete the incorporation using a power of attorney, and the KvK registration typically follows within a few working days. This is entirely separate from whichever immigration process a non-EU founder may also need to complete.
What is the sponsorship gap and how does it affect my BV?
The sponsorship gap refers to the difficulty a brand-new BV faces in obtaining Recognised Sponsor status to sponsor its own DGA as a kennismigrant, since the IND often rejects businesses with no balance sheet or trading history. This route tends to work better after a BV has been operating for at least a year.
How long does it take to become fully operational in the Netherlands?
Incorporation and KvK registration can take just days. Immigration approval for non-EU founders and finding suitable housing are the two steps that genuinely take longest, often several months each, and should be started as early as possible rather than left until after incorporation.
What is the gebruikelijk loon and why does it matter for a relocating DGA?
The gebruikelijk loon is the minimum salary, 58,000 euros gross in 2026, that every DGA must draw from their BV. It means payroll has to be set up from day one, and it interacts directly with the 30% ruling, which applies to salary but never to dividend income.
How does the 30% ruling work and has it changed?
The 30% ruling lets qualifying incoming employees and DGAs treat 30% of their gross salary as a tax-free reimbursement for extraterritorial costs, for up to five years. That rate stays at 30% for any ruling taking effect through the end of 2026; it only drops to 27% for rulings starting from 2027 onward.
Why is finding housing in the Netherlands difficult in 2026?
Legislative changes in 2024 and 2025 pushed roughly 40% of free-sector rental properties off the market, and landlords now strongly favour tenants with Dutch employment contracts over self-employed founders or new BV directors, often demanding large upfront prepayments from international applicants.
What is an NL IBAN and does it matter for my business?
An NL IBAN is a Dutch bank account number, and it matters commercially for direct debit mandates, iDEAL payments, and client confidence, since many Dutch clients and services still hesitate over unfamiliar foreign account numbers on an invoice.
Written by
Nick Knuppe
CEO & Founder
