Facts
When are you genuinely self-employed, and when is it false self-employment?
Whether someone genuinely works self-employed depends on three things together: who determines how, when and where the work happens; whether the assignment is embedded in the organisation or stands next to it; and who carries the risk when the work is not up to standard. None of the three decides alone. We test them before an assignment starts, together with the client, because repairing afterwards is not possible.
NewData
Contents
In this article
- Who determines how, when and where the work happens?
- Is the assignment inside the organisation, or next to it?
- Who carries the risk when things go wrong?
- Why we test up front, and not afterwards
- And the Wtta, does that come on top?
The question comes by almost every week, and usually in the form of a worry: am I about to be falsely self-employed? Or, from the other side: do we run a risk if we hire this freelancer? The same three axes determine it, and they can be explained without you having to be a lawyer.
What follows is not a verdict. We test and we explain; the tax authority judges. Every indication below points towards an outcome: none of the three decides by itself, and the weighing is the work.
The first axis
Who determines how, when and where the work happens?
The first axis is about direction. Not about whether someone cooperates pleasantly, but about who has the last word on the way the work is done.
What is looked at in practice:
- May the client give instructions on the execution? Mind the wording: it is about being allowed to, not about doing it. A client who has the right to direct but never uses it still counts here.
- Who determines the working hours and the workplace? Fixed hours, an attendance duty and time registration in the same system as the staff point towards employment.
- May the contractor have themselves replaced? If they can have the work done by someone else when unavailable, that points towards self-employment. If they must do it personally, that points the other way.
- Is there an effort or a result obligation? A delimited result that is settled on points towards self-employment; going along on hours points towards employment.
- Are there performance or appraisal interviews? Those belong to an employer and not to a client.
The second axis
Is the assignment inside the organisation, or next to it?
The second axis is the hardest one, because here sits the detail people do not know counts. It is about organisational embedding: is this work part of the ordinary course of business, or does it stand next to it?
- Do own employees do the same work? If largely the same work is also done by people in employment, that is a strong indication towards embedding.
- Why was it outsourced? Knowledge the organisation does not have points towards self-employment. A shortage of hands points the other way.
- Do the staff regulations apply? The same house rules, the same leave procedure, the same mandatory courses: that is the organisation closing itself around the assignment.
- Does the contractor get an email address on the client domain? This is the smallest and at the same time the most common one. It almost always happens for practical reasons, and it still counts.
- Do they join staff gatherings? The Christmas party, the team outings, the monthly department meeting: none of these are decisive on their own, but they do fill in the picture.
- Do they manage staff of the client? That points strongly towards a position inside the organisation.
The third axis
Who carries the risk when things go wrong?
The third axis is about entrepreneurship: does the contractor truly work at their own expense and risk, or only on paper?
- Who pays for the repair work? If the contractor has to repair a mistake in their own time, that points towards self-employment.
- Who is liable for damage? And is that liability insured?
- Do they carry their own name towards relations of the client? Or are they indistinguishable from the own staff to the outside world?
- Are they recognisable as working for that organisation, with a business card and a signature of the client? Then that points towards embedding.
The test
Why we test up front, and not afterwards
With us, freelance assignments run through our partner Servorg, with a checklist we also put before the client. That list walks exactly these three axes, and both parties sign it before the work starts.
That is no formality, and the reason is hard: if it goes wrong, the bill lands with the client. If the tax authority rules afterwards that it was false self-employment, Servorg recovers the additional assessment and the fines from the client. We would rather tell that up front than afterwards.
That is why our demands on the client are stricter than on the self-employed professional. It sounds reversed, and it is: most risks arise on the side of the assignment: how it is set up, who directs, and whether the work can be delimited. That is where the most is to be gained, so that is where the bar is highest.
If an assignment does not pass the test, we offer it where possible on a basis of secondment through one of our other brands. The work then keeps existing; only the form in which it is carried out changes.
And further
And the Wtta, does that come on top?
Yes, but later, and it is a different subject. The Dutch act on the admission of labour providers (Wtta) is about who is allowed to lend out workers, not about whether an assignment is self-employed work. The timeline is on our page about freelance work and on the procurement page, in one place and with the date on which we last checked it. As of today not a single lender has been admitted.
Do you want to know whether a specific assignment passes the test? Put it before us. That costs one conversation and in the worst case saves an additional assessment.
Questions
Frequently asked questions
Is the test about me as a person?+
The test is about the assignment and not about you as a person. What is judged is how the work is set up: who directs it, whether it is embedded in the organisation, and who carries the risk. The same person can work as a self-employed professional at one client and not at another.
What happens when an assignment does not pass the test?+
Then the assignment does not go ahead as freelance work. Where possible we offer it on a secondment basis through one of our other brands, so the work keeps existing and only the form changes.
Who ends up paying an additional assessment?+
The client. If the tax authority rules afterwards that it was false self-employment, the additional assessment and the fines are recovered from the client. That is the reason the test happens up front and not afterwards.
Does this apply to short assignments too?+
Yes. The duration of an assignment is not a test by itself. An assignment of six weeks that is fully embedded in the organisation and directed from day to day points towards employment just as much as an assignment of two years.
About this article
About this article
Questions following this article? Contact us at info@newdata.nl.
Facts
Kind of article: Facts. Differences and definitions: what is what, and where the distinction lies.
Labels: self-employment, freelance, false self-employment, DBA act, Wtta, procurement.
Further reading
Related articles
What does secondment cost?
The scale of August 2026, what the market charges and how the rate is set upfront.
Wilco Kah · 14 August 2026 · 2 minutes read
What must I pay a highly skilled migrant at minimum?
The IND salary thresholds as of 11 August 2026 and the hourly rate that follows.
Wilco Kah · 14 August 2026 · 2 minutes readAuthor
Who is behind this article?
Wilco Kah
co-founder NewData
Co-author: Claude.
By Wilco Kah and Claude. The text was written on the basis of NewData’s figures and has not yet been edited. More about the author is on the author page of Wilco Kah.