rachuk86

Hi all,

It seems like this is a good place to ask questions I cannot seem to find answers to!!

I moved from London to Amsterdam in July to live with my boyfriend and I am currently working as a volunteer at VUmc. I am a qualified audiologist (ear specialist!) and have found it very difficult to figure out how to get a job working with patients, as I did in London. I do not speak Dutch (yet!) but I've done all the basic stuff so far (found a house, obtained a BSN number, set up my bank account, organised Dutch lessons...). I am unsure about how long I will be here as I have a sabbatical from work but I know there are rules about your intentions (if you're intending to stay here 4+ months).

My questions are-

1) As a UK citizen, if I fly back to the UK to work for 2-4days a month but I'm living in Amsterdam, how do I figure out who to pay taxes to? I believe there is some kind of EU agreement but it's a bit beyond me as I've always had my taxes sorted out for me in my NHS pay slips!

2) I want to do some free lance photography to pay the bills, how do I set myself up as self employed here in Amsterdam?

3) Are there tax reliefs if the majority of your time is spent volunteering?

4) I still have a student loan which I will need to pay- any advice on how to work out what percentage you have to pay back based on your salary?

Probably all questions I should have got answers to before coming here but I thought it would be easier to just find a job here and not have to return to the UK for work every so often!

Any help would be much appreciated; equally if anyone has heard about any English medical centers or hearing aid clinics in the Amsterdam area, please let me know. Google only has so many answers...!

Thanks in advance!

Rachel

gioppino

Well first of all if you are serious about living in NL you should hurry up and study Dutch. Probably Amsterdam is the wrong place because you find very few locals in there.

Once you have achieved a NT2 level 2 diploma then you should follow some sort of study (opleiding). In NL no piece of paper, no work.

1) You pay tax where you are resident. If you are f/t resident in NL and you work casually in UK, you should pay tax in NL. If in doubt call the Belastingdienst, they also have a number for the non Dutch speakers.

rachuk86

My Dutch lessons start 8th September and as my boyfriend and my colleagues at VU are Dutch, I'm learning a bit already.. I don't have any English friends here!
Thanks for that website- I will call them in the next few days once I've looked at all the info they have online.
Thanks again!

StevieLW

1) Im not an expert on tax, but I believe if you're a resident in the netherlands then all income must be reported on your tax return, however you will be entitled to double taxation relief: Income from abroad: in which country must you pay taxes?
Whether you are a tex resident or not depends upon the amount of time you are spending in one country.

2) you would need to look into becoming a ZZP'er
Guide to going freelance | I amsterdam

3) best to ask the belastingdienst, but I DOUBT IT!

4) for student loan you need to submit a form to the SLC stating your estimated earnings for the coming year, along with evidence (letter of employment, past payslips etc). they will calculate your required contributions and ask you to pay monthly:
Student Loan Repayment - Repaying from overseas

If you don't submit your evidence of earnings then they will request you pay the default amount of 250GBP per month. Best to send them the form even if you have no work to defer your payments. As you live in NL you must pay 10% of your earnings over 16,910GBP per year. in 2014 they use an exchange rate of 0.84861 for converting Euro income to GBP. every year the overseas threshold and exchange rate changes.
Student Loan Repayment - Overseas thresholds

calman014

I think you will find that you will primarily pay taxes in the country where you are working.
If this is UK then you will pay taxes there but also have to declare your income to the Dutch Tax Authorities before April 1 of the following year. In this case double tax agreements apply and if you also have a student loan there should be allowances for that too.

In this scenario you may not have to pay much tax in NL.

Living in NL requires that you have health insurance, even though you work and pay taxes in UK, simply living in NL obliges you under the recently changed rules to have at least basic medical cover here, (should be about Euro 90,- per month).

If you are a qualified audiologist then perhaps you should seek work as an assistant at first until you get your Dutch up to par. Not only will you have some income but you will learn important terms and working practices. Freelance photography is not going to bring you much income and looking at all the administrative hassle of being registered as self employed, is not realistic at this stage. By all means do it as a hobby and see if your work generates some interest (Facebook/Flickr etc..)
then it would be time to consider the following step.

Tips for learning Dutch:

Read the newspapers daily and always keep a notepad at hand.
Watch the news on TV and see if you can understand what's going on.

Buy an English - Dutch and Dutch- English dictionaries from the bookshop.

Buy an English- Dutch phrase book (Berlitz is probably the best).

Set yourself the goal of 1 new word a day.

Discuss the word and it's uses and variations with a Dutch person.. you'd be surprised how quickly you build up a good vocabulary.

It will take about 2 years to speak and write reasonable Dutch.

Good Luck!

rachuk86

Thanks so much for the great advice so far- Really very helpful!

I will follow up on all your suggestions- I'm already watching the news in Dutch every morning which is helping but the notepad is a good call!

Thanks again everyone, I appreciate it!

gioppino

Sorry for disagreeing but if you're into learning the language seriously, don't go for booklets. Go for serious grammar books and dictionaries. If you have spare time go to the Library and use the Van Dale dictionary. Look for a local ROC college that teaches Nederlands als Tweede Taal. You must register before the end of September.

calman014

You can disagree as much as you like but for a beginner these are the most valuable and easy steps to getting to grips with the language without being lumbered immediately with lessons and high costs. Expensive books and courses are the next step after you have built up a little knowledge and confidence. Good courses will provide you with the books anyway.

Going to lessons at such an early stage are a waste of time and money. You will start to feel like a parrot with little sense of context and get irritated.

You will learn the language quicker as a result if you follow my simple tips.

It works.

llams

WRT tax there is no EU agreement but differrent double tax agreements between each pair of countries.

The UK-NL one is here
http://www.hmrc.gov.uk/taxtreaties/i...nds-uk-dtc.pdf

All the treaties are of the same format and you must first determine where you are resident.

Each country has different rules for that and since last year there is a statutory residence test [extremely complicated set of rules] which will determine UK residence.
If you are 45 days per year in the UK you may be definitely not resident but the numbe of days you can be in the UK will depend on all the other factors [have a home/family/available accomodation - your parents place counts/ etc etc.]

The NL rule is broadly that you are resident if NL is the centre/base for your life. If your only home is Amsterdam and you are planning a life-long term here and you register you are pretty much sure to be resident here.

You can be resident in both [or neither] and then the DTA comes into play.
Basically each clause specifies type of income and where it is taxed first.
One of the early clauses specifies what taxes are covered [death tax is often not as a someone I know in AMS who was living in France recently discovered to his cost]

There is a clause at the end which specifies how the tax already paid in the other country is offset.

For the NL, the usual rule is that the income counts to make your tax band [% rate] higher but you don't pay any tax on the income already taxed in the other country.

For the UK, the usual rule is that you have to work out your tax including the income already taxed in the other country and then can deduct the amount paid in the other country from the tax due in the UK. This is stingy and annoying for investment income and CGT. It means you need to do a complex calculation just to calculate it and for CGT there is no NL tax [because it's included in the 30% of 4% nominal yield you pay every year] but you will therefore have to pay UK tax if resident there.

HTH,
llams

Footnote:
Meanwhile UK gov is allowing non-residents to sell UK property at huge profits and pay no CGT. They say they are making it fair from next budget by charging non-residents on the gains made after 2015 or2016. IOW Daves bumchums from Eton will lock in their CGT-free gain from UK property speculation. Useless pathetic Labour haven't noticed but did nothing to change it anyway. Spineless lib dems just wanna hand on to that teat they're busy suckling so have said nothing.
A new fair system? Yeah right

karij1980

Klare Taal is a very good book for Grammar. It has 2 pages for each chapter. One explaining how to use phrases and terms and the 2nd page is an exercise page so that you write what you have learned. It's not a cheap book (around €41), but its worth buying. You can get it from Bol.com