Is the 30% ruling actually worth it? Expat tax breaks, decoded.
By Skyler Bissell · June 25, 2026 · 7 min read
A recruiter slides "and you'll qualify for the 30% ruling" into the offer email like it's a signing bonus. You Google it for nine minutes, see "30% of your salary, tax-free," and mentally bank a raise you haven't gotten yet.
Slow down. The 30% ruling is real, and on a high salary it's worth a lot. But "30% tax-free" is not "30% more money." It expires, it's getting smaller, and it does nothing about the thing that actually decides whether the move pays off: the gap between the gross number on the offer and the cash that lands in your account after rent, daycare, and a health-insurance premium you didn't have back home.
So let's do the math people skip.
TL;DR
- Expat tax regimes are real, time-limited discounts on income tax. The Netherlands 30% ruling, Spain's Beckham Law, Portugal's IFICI, and Sweden's expert relief each shave a chunk off income tax for a set number of years, then stop. None of them is a flat "X% raise."
- The Dutch 30% ruling on a €150,000 salary is worth about €24,000 a year in cityparity's engine, for up to five years. Real money, but it drops to a 27% rate from 2027, with a salary floor (~€46,660 on the taxable portion) and a cap (~€246,000).
- Some "expat regimes" don't touch a normal local salary at all. The UK's FIG regime exempts foreign income, not your UK paycheck. Norway's flat-rate PAYE scheme is first-year-ish and capped, and you often opt out of it once you earn real money.
- A tax break rarely survives contact with the full safety-net math. A lower gross with subsidized childcare and capped healthcare can beat a tax-broken higher gross. That gap is the whole reason we built the calculator.
What an "expat tax regime" actually is (and isn't)
An expat tax regime is a special, temporary tax status a country offers people it recruited from abroad, usually exempting part of their income from income tax (or applying a flat rate) for a set number of years. The point is to make the country competitive for international talent without cutting taxes for everyone.
Three things people get wrong about them, every time:
- It cuts income tax, and only income tax. Most of these breaks reduce the base your income tax runs on. They typically leave social contributions (pension, national insurance, the stuff funding the very safety net you're moving toward) sitting on your full salary. In the Netherlands, the 30% ruling shrinks your Box 1 income-tax base; it doesn't make your social-insurance contributions disappear.
- It expires. Five years here, six there. Year six, your take-home can drop by a five-figure sum overnight, in the same job, for the same work.
- "30% tax-free" is not "+30% take-home." You were never paying 100% tax on that slice. Exempting 30% of your gross from a ~50% top bracket is worth roughly 15% of gross at the very top: about €24,000 on a €150k salary, by our engine. That's real money, though well short of the €45,000 the phrasing implies.
Worked example: €150,000 in Amsterdam, with and without the ruling
The numbers below come straight from cityparity's tax engine, the same one behind our San Francisco vs Amsterdam page, for a single filer on a €150,000 base. They're income-tax-only (before living costs) and rounded, but real.
Say you land a €150,000 base in Amsterdam. Dutch income tax (Box 1) tops out around 49.5%, and the system has two credits that phase out as you earn more, so your effective rate lands below the headline.
Without the 30% ruling
- Taxable base€150,000
- Effective tax + NI ~43%−€64,000
- Take-home≈ €86,000
With the 30% ruling
- Tax-free slice (~30%)€45,000
- Effective tax ~27%−€40,000
- Take-home≈ €110,000
So the ruling is worth about €24,000 a year here: a small car every year, a big chunk of a daycare bill, several flights home. Worth having. But notice three things.
- It's nowhere near "+€45,000." The tax-free slice is taxed at zero instead of taxed at the top rate. The value is the tax you skipped, which is far less than the slice itself.
- It has a shelf life. Five years, then you're the €86,000 person. Plan your rent around the year-six number, because year one won't last.
- It's shrinking. The Dutch rate already steps down to 27% from 2027, with a salary floor and a ~€246,000 cap. The version a 2021 transplant brags about is already gone.
Six regimes, side by side
Annual value at a ~€150k-equivalent salary, from cityparity's engine (income tax only, single filer). Rounded, and rules change yearly, so confirm before you sign anything.
| Country / regime | How it works | Value at ~€150k | Duration | The catch |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Netherlands, 30% ruling | Up to 30% of gross paid tax-free (income-tax base only) | ~€24k/yr | 5 years | Drops to 27% from 2027; salary floor (~€46,660); cap (~€246,000); recruited-from-abroad rule |
| Spain, Beckham Law | Flat ~24% on Spanish employment income up to ~€600k, instead of the progressive scale | ~€19k/yr | Up to 6 years | Must not have been Spanish-tax-resident recently; you forfeit some resident deductions |
| Portugal, IFICI (NHR successor) | Flat 20% on eligible Portuguese-source employment income | ~€28k/yr | 10 years | Tight eligibility, narrowed to specific "qualified" roles; not the old come-one-come-all NHR |
| Sweden, expert tax relief | 25% of salary exempt from income tax | ~€19k/yr | 7 years | Salary-threshold OR formal-expert test; apply within months of arrival; social fees still on full pay |
| Italy, impatriati | Large share of employment income exempted from IRPEF | ~€34k/yr | ~5 years (+ extensions) | Repeatedly reformed and tightened; the exempt share keeps moving; INPS on full gross |
| UK, FIG (4-year foreign income) | Exempts foreign income/gains for new arrivals | ~€0 on a UK salary | 4 years | Does nothing for your UK paycheck; it's for offshore income, and replaced the non-dom rules |
Two of these are the point of the whole section.
The UK's FIG regime is a mirage if you're moving for a job. It exempts foreign income and gains for your first four years of UK residence. Your London salary is UK income. FIG doesn't touch it. If a recruiter implies the FIG regime softens your UK tax bill, they're either confused or hoping you are. Check what a London move actually does to your money before you build it into your budget.
Norway's flat-rate PAYE scheme is the other one to not over-count. New arrivals can use a simplified flat-rate withholding, but it's aimed at the first year (think short stints and your arrival year), it's capped at an income ceiling, and above that ceiling ordinary progressive tax wins, so higher earners routinely leave the scheme. It is not a five-year discount on a big Oslo salary. For a senior offer, it rarely moves the headline.
The part the tax break can't fix
Here's where the relocation-pitch math and the real math part ways.
A tax regime makes a number on the offer letter bigger. It does nothing about the costs that move when you move. And for the people we built this for (you, probably: a partner, maybe kids, a real offer in hand), those costs swing the answer by tens of thousands.
Run the actual comparison and the break often gets swallowed:
- Childcare. Two kids in US daycare can run $40,000+ a year. In much of Europe it's subsidized down to a fraction of that. That swing dwarfs most tax breaks, and it's invisible on the offer letter.
- Healthcare. A US plan with premiums plus deductibles plus a real out-of-pocket max is a line item that mostly vanishes (or shrinks to a flat premium) under European systems. The tax break doesn't create that; the system does.
- Time. Five-plus weeks of statutory vacation and months of paid parental leave aren't on the W-2, but they're a real raise you'd otherwise buy back with unpaid days and nanny costs.
This is the cityparity thesis in one line: the safety net has a dollar value, and once you price it in, "the gross is higher in City A, plus a tax break" stops being the trump card. A lower European gross, even without a fancy expat regime, can beat a tax-broken US package once daycare and healthcare are on the table. Sometimes the break is the deciding factor. Often it's a rounding error next to the childcare line. You can't know which from the offer email.
So, is the 30% ruling worth it?
If you're a high earner moving to the Netherlands and you qualify: yes, clearly, for as long as it lasts. It's one of the better expat regimes going, even at the reduced 27% rate. Just size it honestly, about €24,000 a year on a €150k base, for a fixed window rather than a permanent raise. Then plan your fixed costs around the post-ruling number so year six doesn't surprise you.
But "is the tax break worth it?" is the wrong question to decide a move on. The right question is whether the whole package comes out ahead: gross, minus real taxes, minus the costs that actually change, plus the safety net you're buying. The tax break is one input, usually not the biggest.
Stop guessing from the offer email. Put in your real salary and your real family, and see the equivalent number you'd actually need:
- Run your own numbers in the calculator →
- San Francisco vs Amsterdam: where the 30% ruling lives
- NYC vs Berlin: high US gross against a deep safety net, no expat regime needed to make it close
- NYC vs Lisbon: the IFICI flat-20% case, and what it does to a real software-engineer package
FAQ
Is the Netherlands 30% ruling really 30% of your salary tax-free?
Up to 30% of your gross can be paid as a tax-free allowance, but only the income-tax base shrinks, not your social contributions, and the rate steps down to 27% from 2027. It also has a salary floor (~€46,660 on the taxable portion) and a cap (~€246,000). "Tax-free" describes the slice. The value to you is the tax you avoid on it, around 15% of gross at this salary by our engine, well short of the full 30%.
How long does the 30% ruling last?
Up to five years for new qualifying arrivals. When it ends, your take-home drops in the same job, so budget around the post-ruling figure rather than the year-one one.
Does the UK's FIG regime lower the tax on my UK salary?
No. The FIG (Foreign Income and Gains) regime exempts foreign income and gains for your first four years of UK residence. A UK salary is UK income, so FIG doesn't change it.
Is a lower European salary with a tax break better than a higher US salary?
It depends on your family and your costs, but more often than people expect, the European package wins even without the tax break, once subsidized childcare and capped healthcare are counted. A tax break helps, but it rarely flips a comparison that the safety net hadn't already flipped. Run both salaries through the calculator to see your own number.
Which expat tax regime is the most generous?
By raw annual value at a ~€150k salary, Italy's impatriati is the biggest in our engine (~€34k a year). For long duration, Portugal's IFICI (flat 20% for up to 10 years) and Spain's Beckham Law (flat ~24% for up to 6 years) stand out. The "best" regime is the one you actually qualify for, in the city whose total cost math already works for you.
Tax figures here come from cityparity's per-city engine (income tax, single filer, before living costs) and are rounded; rules change yearly and by personal circumstance, so confirm with an advisor before making decisions. See the methodology.