One day, usually in May, you check your bank account expecting the usual number and there's... more. Congratulations, that's vakantiegeld, holiday allowance, a statutory bonus on top of your regular salary, specifically designed to fund a beach, a ski trip, or at minimum a very nice IKEA run. Almost everyone working in the Netherlands gets it, and the first time it lands feels like a small win, right up until you check what it would've been if it weren't taxed quite so aggressively.
The name is doing a lot of marketing
Nobody checks if you actually go on holiday. You can spend vakantiegeld on a week in Lisbon or on a new washing machine, the Belastingdienst is not going to ask for a boarding pass.
The legal minimum is 8% of your gross annual salary. Plenty of collective labour agreements (CAOs) pay more than that, so before you do the math in your head, check your own contract or CAO. 8% is the floor the government guarantees, not necessarily the number that shows up.
Most employers pay it once a year, usually in May, as one lump sum covering the previous twelve months. Some spread it across every monthly paycheck instead, a little bit each time rather than one big drop. Both are perfectly legal, your contract should say which one applies to you, so it's worth an actual read instead of a skim.
This isn't just trivia: a once-a-year lump sum is taxed differently than the same amount spread monthly. Our calculator lets you switch between "lump sum" and "monthly" mode for holiday allowance so you can see the real difference for your own number, not someone else's.
A lump-sum holiday allowance gets taxed under the Dutch bijzonder tarief (special rate) system, which slaps a flat withholding rate on one-off payments like bonuses and holiday pay, based on what you earned last year. For 2026 that flat rate sits around 40–42% for most incomes, which feels brutal if you were mentally dividing your usual monthly tax rate by twelve and expecting the same number. It isn't a punishment for going on holiday, it's just how one-off payments get withheld upfront, and any amount over-withheld gets reconciled when you file your annual return.
If your employer pays it monthly instead, it gets folded into your regular taxable income and taxed through the normal monthly brackets and credits, which for many people produces a less dramatic, less "wait, where did it go" kind of result.
Worked example
Someone earning €60,000 gross a year gets the statutory minimum of 8%: €60,000 × 8% = €4,800 gross holiday allowance, paid as one lump sum in May. At a bijzonder tarief of roughly 41% for this income bracket, that lands around €2,830 net, noticeably less than naively taking 8% of a typical net monthly figure. Run your own gross salary through the holiday allowance calculator for the exact number instead of guessing.
For the official rules on minimum vakantiegeld and payout timing, see Rijksoverheid: hoe hoog is mijn vakantiegeld.
This article reflects Dutch tax rules as of 2026. It is not tax advice, consult a qualified belastingadviseur for your specific situation.