Box 1 Income for Expats

PublishedMarch 16, 2026

UpdatedMarch 19, 2026

ByJolande Geerts

Short answer

Box 1 is the Dutch tax box for income from work and home. Belastingdienst treats your Box 1 position as the income items that belong in this box minus the deductions that also belong there in the same tax year.

For expats, the real difficulty is usually not the label Box 1, but the follow-up questions:

does this payment belong in Box 1 at all?
am I filing as a resident or a non-resident taxpayer?
do I still report foreign income in the Dutch return?
is this employment income, former-employment income, overig werk, or something that belongs in Box 2 or Box 3 instead?

Who this article is for

This page is for:

employees who want to understand whether salary and benefits fall in Box 1
expats receiving pensions, UWV-style replacement income or former-employment payments
people who moved to or from the Netherlands during the year
taxpayers who are unsure whether foreign income still needs to be reported in a Dutch return

What Belastingdienst means by Box 1

Belastingdienst describes Box 1 as your income from work and home. In practical terms, that means the Dutch tax return groups a broad range of work-related and owner-occupied-home items together in one box.

The important operational point is this:

Box 1 is not only salary.

A payment can belong in Box 1 even when it is not monthly payroll from your current employer.

Common Box 1 income streams for expats

Typical Box 1 income can include:

salary from employment
holiday pay, bonus and similar wage components
payments connected to former employment
pensions and certain other retirement-related payments
Dutch social-security or UWV-style replacement income, depending on the specific benefit
income from other work that is not treated as full business profit
owner-occupied-home items that fall under the work-and-home box rules

That is why an expat should not classify income only by asking, “Was this on my payslip?” The better question is, “Which Dutch tax box does this income legally belong to?”

What is often confused with Box 1

Expats often mix up four different questions:

1. Does the income belong in Box 1, 2 or 3?

This is the classification question.

2. Is the income Dutch-taxable?

This is the treaty / tax-residency question.

3. Do I still need to report the income in the Dutch return?

This is the reporting question.

4. Can I deduct something or claim relief afterwards?

This is the deductions / double-tax-relief question.

Those four questions are related, but they are not the same.

A very common error is to think: “If the Netherlands does not end up taxing this income, I do not need to mention it at all.” That is often wrong for resident taxpayers.

Resident, non-resident and moving-year situations

Belastingdienst states that:

if you live in the Netherlands, you are generally a resident taxpayer
if you live outside the Netherlands but have Dutch income that the Netherlands may tax, you are generally a non-resident taxpayer

That matters because a resident taxpayer may still need to report Dutch and foreign income in the return, while a non-resident return usually focuses on Dutch-taxable items.

This is also why arrival-year and departure-year returns are often harder than ordinary years. The Box 1 classification can stay the same, but the reporting scope changes because your tax-residency position changed during the year.

If you moved into or out of the Netherlands during the year, this page should usually be read together with the moving-year / M-form guidance.

Foreign income: report first, relief may come later

Belastingdienst explicitly states that residents with foreign income report their world income. It also states that this does not automatically mean the Netherlands will finally tax that foreign income. If a treaty gives taxing rights to the other country, you may instead get double-tax relief.

That means the safe workflow is:

identify whether the income belongs in Box 1
identify whether you are resident or non-resident for the relevant period
report the income correctly
only then assess whether treaty relief or another correction applies

For expats, this is one of the main reasons a Box 1 page needs strong links to the foreign-income and moving-year pages.

A quick example

Suppose you:

lived in the Netherlands for part of the year
earned Dutch salary
also received foreign salary before moving
received a Dutch bonus after the move
and later got a pension or benefit payment

You may be dealing with:

several payments that still belong in Box 1
a resident / non-resident split in the same year
foreign income that still has to be reported
relief that only becomes visible later in the return calculation

That is not a “simple payroll question” anymore. It is a Box 1 + residency + treaty workflow question.

What this page does not decide for you

This page helps you recognise the Box 1 category. It does not by itself decide:

whether a payment belongs in Box 2 or Box 3 instead
whether your side activity is “result from other activities” or full business profit
whether the Netherlands or another country has final taxing rights
whether a specific deduction or credit is available

Those issues need the next-step articles linked below.

Common mistakes

The most common Box 1 mistakes are:

thinking Box 1 means salary only
forgetting pensions, benefits or former-employment income
assuming foreign income never appears in a Dutch return
confusing reporting with final taxation
ignoring moving-year complexity after immigration or emigration
classifying side income too quickly as business profit or as “not relevant”

What to do now

Use this order:

List every income stream you had in the year.
Mark which items probably belong in Box 1.
Separate current employment, former-employment, pension/benefit and side-activity income.
Check whether you were resident, non-resident or moved during the year.
If foreign income is involved, check the double-tax-relief page next.
If you moved during the year, check the M-form / moving-year page next.
If side income is the real problem, check the “result from other activities vs business” page next.

Official sources

Tags:

Tax