The engage­ment with inde­pend­ent con­tract­ors is once again a hot top­ic in the news! Since the abol­i­tion of the VAR in 2016, the prin­ciple of leg­al cer­tainty in advance has become an ‘old school’ notion. Since the intro­duc­tion of the DBA Act, employ­ers and inde­pend­ent con­tract­ors are required to accur­ately clas­si­fy their rela­tion­ship and, in prin­ciple, bear the fisc­al and labor law con­sequences if this clas­si­fic­a­tion proves incor­rect ret­ro­spect­ively. Shortly after the DBA Act was intro­duced, it became appar­ent that the tax author­it­ies were unable to enforce com­pli­ance, lead­ing to the intro­duc­tion of a morator­i­um on enforce­ment fol­low­ing the intro­duc­tion of mod­el agree­ments. Hence, the gov­ern­ment neg­lected an import­ant duty as a gate­keep­er for the fisc­al aspect for a sig­ni­fic­ant peri­od. This morator­i­um on enforce­ment will be lif­ted on 1 Janu­ary 2025, and in line with the cur­rent state of jur­is­pru­dence, the bill “cla­ri­fic­a­tion of employ­ment rela­tion­ship assess­ment and leg­al pre­sump­tion” is expec­ted to take effect on 1 July 2025. Although the gov­ern­ment hopes that the bill will provide more clar­ity on when there is a real inde­pend­ent con­tract­or or an employ­ment rela­tion­ship, employ­ers should not adopt a wait­ing atti­tude.

The leg­al pro­vi­sion cur­rently determ­in­ing wheth­er an employ­ment con­tract exists or not will not change but will only be sup­ple­men­ted. As there is no enforce­ment morator­i­um in labor law, employ­ers already have ample reas­on to be crit­ic­al regard­ing the assess­ment and cor­rect clas­si­fic­a­tion of their pop­u­la­tion of inde­pend­ent con­tract­ors. Employ­ers would be wise to assess now wheth­er they are indeed deal­ing with real inde­pend­ent con­tract­ors and, if not, what meas­ures could still be taken to mit­ig­ate risks for the future where pos­sible. Pre­vent­ing sig­ni­fic­ant fin­an­cial con­sequences in advance is always bet­ter than try­ing to resolve them after­ward. Nat­ur­ally, the labor law spe­cial­ists at HVG Law can assist you in mak­ing the right choices and assess­ing poten­tial risks. Col­lab­or­a­tion with tax spe­cial­ists from EY Belastingad­viseurs and the avail­ab­il­ity of highly rel­ev­ant sec­tor know­ledge, such as in health­care, gives us a uniquely pos­i­tions to help you with this top­ic.

Of course, we under­stand that you might not be eager to be the first, but we can also ima­gine that you cer­tainly do not want to be the last. There­fore, keep an eye on this page for the most recent updates and blogs on this sub­ject. Feel free to con­tact us if you would like to dis­cuss with one of our spe­cial­ists. Nat­ur­ally, this can also be done in a mul­tidiscip­lin­ary man­ner, in con­sulta­tion with the spe­cial­ists from EY.