Dutch freelancers receive over 10.000 euros in payouts for sham self-employment

Courts in the Netherlands are seeing more cases involving freelancers who claim that they should be full-on employees. Dozens of these cases have seen the courts rule in favour of the individuals under “false self-employment”, ordering employers to provide compensation running into the thousands.

Dutch employers pay for false self-employment

There has been an increase in the number of lawsuits related to sham self-employment since 2023, when the Supreme Court ruled that Deliveroo delivery workers are considered actual employees. Out of 47 recent cases taken to Dutch courts, 24 saw the judge ruling that the self-employed person should actually be classified as an employee, reports NOS. 

In these situations, the company has to retroactively provide vacation days, collective labour agreement wages, holiday allowance, severance pay, pension premiums and sick days. Results from a Nieuwsuur survey among experts show that the payout could amount to tens of thousands of euros per "fake freelancer". 

A previous case saw handball club Limburg Lions having to pay out 50.000 euros to a former player after the courts determined that he was, in fact, an employee, rather than a self-employed person. 

New self-employment law draws attention to false freelancing

Since the beginning of this year, the Dutch tax authorities have started enforcing stricter rules for self-employment. The organisation announced the aim to crack down on the exploitation of freelancers. 

As more checks are done to ensure ZZP’ers (self-employed people) are not being “falsely self-employed” - working for a single client when they should be directly employed by the company - more Dutch companies are hiring fewer freelancers, and a record number of single-person businesses in the Netherlands have closed down.