Chair rental and hiring are two different things
Someone extra two days a week, with no payroll administration and no fixed costs in January. That is how it gets sold to you, and for some salons it works exactly like that.
The trouble is that the trade runs two arrangements together that look nothing alike to the tax authorities.
With chair rental someone rents space from you. That person has their own clients, sets their own prices, takes the money themselves and pays you rent. The money flows towards you.
With hiring a freelancer, a zzp'er in the Netherlands, you give the instruction. You have the clients, you set the rate, your till takes the money and you settle an invoice at the end of the month. The money flows away from you.
The second is far riskier in tax terms, and that is what this guide is about. If you are instead weighing up whether chair rental suits you as a self-employed hairdresser, that sits in the guide on chair rental versus your own salon, written from the other side of the table.
| Question | Chair rental | Hiring a freelancer |
|---|---|---|
| Who sets the price | The renter | The salon |
| Who takes the client's money | The renter, own till | The salon |
| Who brings in the client | The renter | The salon |
| Who sets the working hours | The renter | The salon, through the rota |
| Direction of the money | Renter pays the salon | Salon pays the freelancer |
| Where the assessment risk sits | With the salon as landlord, but only once the rental turns out to be directed work in practice | With the salon as hirer, and this is where the risk is largest |
Where the risk sits: with you, not the freelancer
This is the part almost always skipped in conversations about hiring in.
If the Tax Administration later concludes there was an employment relationship, you have to file payroll tax returns after the fact for every period that person worked, and you receive an additional assessment.
That assessment is in principle imposed as a final levy (eindheffing), and this is where advice pages most often go wrong. Final levy means the wage tax and national insurance contributions land on you. They are no longer wages of the other person, so they cannot offset them in their own income tax return and you cannot claim them back.
There is a way out, but you have to ask for it. You can request that the Tax Administration not apply the final levy, supplying the data needed for that. With that decision in hand it is ordinary employee wages, you correct your returns per person, and you can recover. Without it the tax is grossed up at the tabeltarief: 55.60 percent on annual wages up to 38,884 EUR, 60.10 percent up to 78,427 EUR and 98 percent above that.
The employer Zvw health levy and the employee insurance contributions cannot be recovered under any route. Those always stay with you. Source: Handboek Loonheffingen 2026, paragraph 25.1 and table 5.1, plus article 31 of the Wage Tax Act. Checked September 2026.
So the freelancer in question does not carry this risk. Their invoices were paid, their own return was filed, and they may well be working somewhere else by now. You are holding the bill.
This guide does not go into the assessment itself. The Tax Administration looks at authority and instructions, at embedding in the organisation and at genuine entrepreneurial risk, and that is a weighing of circumstances together rather than a checklist with a verdict at the bottom. Those criteria are set out in the guide on chair rental versus your own salon and are not repeated here.
What a year of hiring costs if it goes wrong
Abstract risk leaves people cold, so work it out.
Take a freelance hairdresser working two days a week in your salon: 16 hours a week, 46 weeks a year, at 35 EUR an hour. That is 736 hours and 25,760 EUR of invoices over a year.
If that relationship is classed as employment, the employer contributions run over it. High Awf, because there is no written permanent employment contract: 7.74 percent. Low Aof, because you are a small employer: 6.27 percent. Wko surcharge 0.50 percent. Whk 1.52 percent, the 2026 average. Employer Zvw levy 6.10 percent. Together 22.13 percent.
| Item | Amount | Calculation |
|---|---|---|
| Paid to the freelancer in a year | 25,760 EUR | 736 hours times 35 EUR |
| Awf high rate 7.74 percent | 1,994 EUR | No written permanent contract |
| Aof low rate 6.27 percent | 1,615 EUR | Small employer rate |
| Wko surcharge 0.50 percent | 129 EUR | On top of the Aof contribution |
| Whk 1.52 percent | 392 EUR | 2026 average, WGA plus Ziektewet |
| Employer Zvw levy 6.10 percent | 1,571 EUR | Not recoverable |
| Not recoverable from the freelancer | 5,701 EUR | 22.13 percent of the invoiced amount |
Source for the contribution rates: the regulation setting the 2026 employee and national insurance contribution percentages, published in the Staatscourant of 5 December 2025. The Whk is an average percentage; your own assessment from the Belastingdienst can come out higher or lower.
That is 5,701 EUR over a single year, for a single freelancer, at modest hours, and it is a floor. If you do not ask for an assessment without final levy, the grossed-up wage tax comes on top: at the lowest tabeltarief of 55.60 percent over the same 25,760 EUR that is 14,323 EUR. Plus tax interest from 1 January following the tax year until 14 days after the date on the assessment.
Two things push that figure up fast. Under the phase-in model corrections in principle reach back to 1 January 2025, so from September 2026 that is already roughly 20 months. And if you hire two people the same way, it doubles.
Set that against the alternative. An employee on the payroll costs you around 34 percent above gross pay, per the build-up in the guide on hiring your first employee. If you are already risking 22 percent in contributions on top of a 35 EUR hourly rate, the price gap between hiring in and employing is smaller than the invoice suggests.
The 2026 enforcement position
A lot of secondary reporting gets this wrong, so here is the position as it stands in the primary documents.
Since 1 January 2025 the Tax Administration can again impose additional payroll tax assessments where a working relationship is seen as employment. According to the Handhavingsplan arbeidsrelaties 2026, part of the soft landing stays in place during 2026: no default penalties, but penalties for intent or gross negligence, with a company visit as the starting point. From 2027 that remaining part expires as well. The plan also runs a phase-in model up to 2030, under which corrections in principle do not reach back further than 1 January 2025, unless there is deliberate abuse or an earlier instruction that was not sufficiently followed. That second exception is almost never mentioned and is the one that matters most for a salon that has already had a visit. Only from 2030 can the Tax Administration reach back five years again. Checked in September 2026.
Two things that are not in it and that you read everywhere anyway.
There are no model agreements left to apply for. Since 6 September 2024 the Tax Administration no longer assesses new model agreements and does not extend existing ones. Agreements approved on that date may be used through 31 December 2029, even where the text itself gives a different end date, and only where the daily reality actually matches.
And the law that was going to clarify everything is not coming in that form. On 6 March 2026 the government dropped the clarification part of the bill, which also retired the name VBAR, and announced a Zelfstandigenwet with no start date. What survived, and did become law, is the legal presumption of employment based on an hourly rate: Staatsblad 2026, 158, with the entry-into-force decree in Staatsblad 2026, 207.
Watch the date, because this is not yet the law of the land. The new article 7:610aa of the Civil Code takes effect on 31 December 2026. From then a freelancer working below the threshold rate can invoke it and you have to show there is no employment contract. It applies immediately to relationships already running on that date, but not retroactively. Until 31 December 2026 only the existing presumptions in articles 7:610a and 7:610b apply.
Watch the figure too, because two are in circulation and that is not sloppiness. The statute says 36 EUR an hour, reference date 1 January 2025, the year the bill was tabled. The government communicates 38 EUR, the same amount indexed to reference date 1 January 2026 (37.07 EUR unrounded). Which figure actually applies on 31 December 2026 is set by ministerial regulation under article III of the Act, and that regulation had not been published as of September 2026. So work with a threshold around 38 EUR and check the regulation before you agree a rate.
That is not an edge case in this trade. A sizeable share of freelance salon rates sits below that threshold.
What can and cannot be self-employed in a salon
Some work in a salon lends itself to a genuine commission, and some work almost never does.
What can work: a specialist you bring in for a defined job who brings their own craft with them. A balayage specialist who comes for a day each month for clients who book specifically for that. Someone doing bridal hair on location. A barber running their own day with their own kit and their own prices. There is a beginning and an end, and there is something of their own in it.
What almost never works: someone who simply takes their turn in the rota. Same treatments, your price list, your products, your till, your uniform, your reception desk, your clients. That is the arrangement that keeps coming back on business forums, and it is exactly the pattern that gets read as employment: working through the salon's till system and being paid out by the owner at the end of the month.
Run these six questions past the person you want to hire in. Do they have their own clients who come specifically for them? Do they set their own rate? Do they take their own money, or does it run through your till? Do they use their own products? Do they decide when they are there, or do you slot them into the rota? Do they wear your uniform?
Six answers on your side does not automatically mean employment, and six on theirs does not automatically mean self-employment. But the further the answers lean your way, the less a contract is going to help you.
Those same questions apply just as hard in a nail studio or a massage practice. A nail technician who rents a spot in your salon on paper, but whose clients come in through your booking system and whom you slot in on your busiest days, is renting in name but working under instruction in practice: the flow of money and the rota point to employment, not the label in the rental agreement. A massage therapist you only call in when it is busy, who fits into your rota and your price list, sits close to an employment contract for the same reason, even though the work is on call. Licence and qualification requirements do differ per trade and sit outside this guide: those are covered separately in the guide on Dutch salon licences by profession.
What to put on paper, and why paper will not save you
Record a commission in writing, and keep the text close to what actually happens.
Include: exactly what is being done and over what period, who brings in the client, who sets the price, who invoices the client, who supplies the products, how cover for illness works, and that the contractor works at their own expense and risk. Note the KVK number and the VAT number, and keep the invoices with a breakdown of dates and hours.
Paper alone will not save you, and that is not a slogan but the core of how the assessment works. The Tax Administration looks at how things actually run. A contract stating that the contractor sets their own hours, alongside a weekly rota in the staff app with their name filled in, works against you rather than for you.
Three things weigh heaviest in practice and you can arrange all three. Let the freelancer bring their own clients and keep those visibly separate. Let them set their own price, even where it differs from your list. And look hard at who takes the client's money, because if your till receives it and you pay it on later, the independence exists on paper and not in practice.
Have the arrangement reviewed by a tax adviser or your trade body before the first invoice arrives. A few hundred euros of advice does not weigh against 5,701 EUR a year of unrecoverable contributions, let alone the final levy that comes on top.
What to do this month
Step 1: write down how it works now. Who brings in the client, who sets the price, who takes the money, who makes the rota. Not what the contract says, but what happened last week.
Step 2: calculate your own figure. Take what you paid in freelance invoices over the past year and multiply it by 22.13 percent. That is the floor of what you cannot recover if it goes wrong; the final levy on the wage tax comes on top.
Step 3: choose. Either change the arrangement so the practice is genuinely independent, or put the person on the payroll. The middle form, a freelancer who effectively takes their turn in the rota, is the most expensive of the three.
Step 4: record the form you chose and have it reviewed. Then set a reminder for January, because the remaining part of the soft landing expires from 2027.
Whichever you choose, the diary has to follow. In CelerBook everyone who works with you gets their own calendar with their own working hours, and you can set a different price and a different duration per person for the same treatment. For a genuine freelancer that is exactly what you want to be able to show: their rate is their rate, their hours are their hours, and their bookings are traceable per person. For employed staff the same setup works, and the client page with visit history shows who comes back to whom. Confirmations go out by email. The first 5 appointments each month are free, then 0.25 EUR excluding VAT per completed appointment, capped at 30 EUR a month for a solo operator plus 5 EUR per additional active staff member. No contract. Try CelerBook for free.