Tax burden on households has fallen from 15% to 12% since 2011

The median household in the Netherlands paid 12.3 percent of its gross household income in income tax and social insurance contributions in 2024. That compares to 15.4 percent in 2011. Dual-income households and pensioners face the lowest tax burden. Statistics Netherlands (CBS) reports this on the basis of newly released figures on incomes and wealth.

The tax burden on households is made up of income tax paid and contributions deducted for statutory social insurance (such as state pension contributions). This is expressed as a percentage of gross household income. The figures are taken from the Integrated Income and Wealth Survey.

Tax burden of 25 percent for those earning the most

The Netherlands has a progressive tax system, which means that, in relative terms, those on higher incomes pay a higher amount of tax. For earners in the top income decile (the ten percent who earn the most), the median tax burden is 24.9 percent of gross household income.

Earners in the lowest income decile (the ten percent who earn the least) often pay no income tax or social security contributions at all, because their income is too low to qualify. However, in relative terms, they pay more in indirect taxes, such as VAT. This analysis excludes the impact of those indirect taxes.

For almost all income groups, the median tax burden was lower in 2024 than it was in 2014. Only for the highest income decile had the burden increased slightly.

Higher tax burden for single-income households than for dual-income households

The tax burden on working households is linked to the number of people in the household who earn an income from employment and/or their own business. In the case of couples, the household may be a single-income or dual-income household. Because the tax burden also depends on the household’s income level, different types of households must be compared by income bracket.

The tax burden on dual-income households is significantly lower than the burden on single-income households, single-parent families and single-person households. For example, for an annual income of between 100,000 and 110,000 euros, the tax burden is 11.9 percent for dual-income households and 19.4 percent for single-income households. For single-income households as a whole, the median tax burden is 16.7 percent, and for dual-income households it is 15.9 percent. Single-person households often face the highest tax burden for a given income level.

Lowest tax burden for pensioners

Households whose main source of income is a pension have the lowest tax burden, at 5.5 percent. People who receive the state pension (AOW) no longer have to pay state pension contributions and are more likely to be in a lower income decile. In 2024, their median income was 44.6 thousand euros, which was higher than the median income of those receiving benefits, which was 25 thousand euros.

The median income for employees was 101.3 thousand euros and for self-employed persons it was 98.6 thousand euros. The self-employed face the highest tax burden, at 15.6 percent of their gross household income. They are also the only group for whom the median tax burden has risen since 2014. The tax allowance for self-employed persons was reduced during that period.

As well as income tax and social security contributions, people also pay contributions towards unemployment insurance, sickness insurance and incapacity for work insurance, as well as pension contributions. In 2024, the median total burden of tax and social security contributions on households was 32.3 percent of gross household income. This overall burden is also lower than in 2011, when it stood at 35.2 percent.