When your own entitystarts to make sense.
A Dutch BV earns its keep when the team is settled, the company will trade here for years, and somebody is ready to carry the director duties. Teamed will tell you plainly when you are not there yet.
Start here
Four questions that decide it before the money does
Most people arrive at this question with a spreadsheet. In the Netherlands the spreadsheet is unusually hard to fill in, because the largest cost of incorporating is a notary's fee that is not published anywhere. Get a real quote before you model anything.
Will you still be hiring here in three years. Setting up is paid once and earns back slowly. If your plan for the Netherlands is shorter than the payback period, the arithmetic never closes.
Must you be the legal employer. Some contracts, licences and public tenders require it outright. When one of those applies, cost stops being the question.
Will the company make a trading profit here. A BV brings corporate tax, annual accounts and monthly payroll filings. Worth having when there is profit to report, a burden when there is not. Model it at 19% rather than 25.8% if you expect to earn under 200,000 euro.
Who carries the director duties. A named director takes on responsibilities that do not disappear if things go wrong, including personal exposure for late filing. If you cannot name that person today, you are not ready.
Any no is a stay signal, whatever the cost maths says.
The number everybody asks for
There is no headcount that works everywhere
The question usually arrives as a number. At how many people does an entity become worth it. There is no honest single answer, and any provider quoting one across countries is quoting a marketing figure rather than a calculation.
It moves with salary levels, with how much employer cost a country adds on top, with what professional help costs locally, and with how long you intend to stay. The Netherlands has its own shape: a comparatively high entry cost because of the notary, then a relatively gentle tax position under 200,000 euro of profit. Those two pull the crossover in opposite directions.
We do not print a number. The crossover calculator works it out for the Netherlands using the actual local figures, and it gives you a band rather than a false point.
What changes
What owning the company actually gets you
You become the employer, in name and in law. Contracts are with you, the relationship is yours, and there is no third party in the middle of it. For a team that has settled and is going to grow, that is usually the point.
The company also sits on your balance sheet. It can hold assets, sign leases, apply for Dutch and European funding, and carry a local trading history. None of those are available through somebody else's entity.
What you give up is flexibility. A BV is slower to close than to open, and closing one properly is itself a notarial and tax exercise rather than a form. That asymmetry is the honest reason to be sure before you start.
Worth saying plainly
Staying where you are is a decision, not a delay
If the team here is small, still changing shape, or you are testing whether the market works, an employer of record is very often the better answer. That is not a lesser outcome and we will say so directly rather than steering you towards the larger piece of work.
Teamed does not earn more by moving you sooner, which is why the Graduation Model exists as a path rather than a sales step.
Teamed's employer of record in the Netherlands is a flat €560 per employee per month, with zero FX mark-up in any currency pairing and one invoice at the end of it. Contractors, employer of record and your own entity all run on one platform, so moving between them later does not mean changing provider or re-onboarding anybody. Real HR and legal experts handle the work, not a ticket queue.
Talk to a member of the team and we will tell you plainly which one suits where you are. If you would rather look at the numbers yourself first, the crossover calculator models it for the Netherlands.
Who carries it
Your own entity, when it's time. We set it up, migrate you in, and hand it back intact.
Global Entity and Employment Operations, which we call GEMO, is how Teamed forms your company, registers it for corporation tax and payroll, runs it month to month and keeps its filings current, across 100+ countries. You stay the employer. We do the work behind it.
In the Netherlands that matters a little more than elsewhere, because Teamed employs through its own local entity rather than a partner. The people who would run your company are the people already running ours.
They set up our EU entity and moved hires across without missing a payroll.
Questions
Questions about making the call
At what headcount should we open a Dutch BV?
There is no single number that holds across countries. The Netherlands has a higher entry cost because of the notary and a gentler tax position under 200,000 euro of profit, and those pull in opposite directions. The calculator works it out.
Why is the Dutch entry cost higher?
Because a BV must be created by a civil-law notary rather than filed online, and the notary sets their own fee. That is the largest and least predictable part of the cost.
Can we change our mind afterwards?
You can close a BV, but it is slower than opening one and is itself a notarial and tax exercise rather than a form.
Do we have to move everyone at once?
No, though a single transfer date is simpler to run and easier for people to understand than a staggered one.
What corporate tax rate would we pay?
19% on the first 200,000 euro of profit and 25.8% above that. Model the band you expect to be in rather than the headline rate.
Sources
- KVK, forming a besloten vennootschap and the notarial deed
- Belastingdienst, vennootschapsbelasting rates and thresholds
- KVK, registration fee for the commercial register
The rest of the the Netherlands guides
Looking for a job in Eor Vs Entity yourself? Teamed does not hire people directly. Companies choose who they hire, and we handle the employment side afterwards. Here is why we cannot help with your search.
