Tuesday 21 September 2021 (Budget Day; Prinsjesdag) the Dutch Ministry of Finance published the 2022 Tax Package (Belastingpakket) including the 2022 Tax Plan (Belastingplan). As expected the Tax Plan contains a proposal for an amendments to work-related cost rules in our wage tax law
A number of amendments to the work-related cost rules (werkkostenregeling) have been proposed, including our long anticipated measure that would accommodate remuneration for costs related to working from home being provided on a tax-free basis by the employer (i.e. without the withholding of wage tax). Due to the coronavirus, employees may incur additional costs associated with working at home (e.g. costs regarding heating, electricity and coffee). It is expected that after the COVID-19 crisis employees will continue to partly work from home. Therefore, it is announced that as per 1 January 2022, an employer can grant to its employees a tax free amount for costs related to working from home of a maximum of EUR 2 per (part of) a day that an employee works from home.
Also, an increase of the budget that can be used for tax-free reimbursements and provisions of work-related cost to employees (vrije ruimte). There was also a proposal to increase this budget for the calendar year 2021; due to COVID-19-related measures, the tax-free budget for 2020 was temporarily increased and could be calculated as follows: 3% over the first EUR 400,000 of taxable wages payable by the employer plus 1.2% over the total taxable wages in excess thereof. The 2022 Tax Plan proposes that for the calendar year 2021 the tax-free budget can be calculated as 3% over the first EUR 400,000 of taxable wages payable by the employer plus 1.18% over the total taxable wages in excess of that amount.