Estimate Dutch Box 3 tax on savings and investments — 2026 tax-free allowance and fictitious return method.
Box 3 taxes savings and investments (not your main home) using a 'fictitious return' method: after a €59,357 per-person tax-free allowance, the Belastingdienst assumes a 7.78% return on your net assets and taxes that assumed income at 36% — an effective rate of about 2.80% of the taxable assets.
Illustrative estimate only, using simplified/rounded 2026 Dutch tax figures — not tax advice. Tax credits phase out at higher incomes, which this tool doesn't model precisely. Always confirm with the Belastingdienst or a tax advisor.
Box 3 is the Dutch tax on wealth — savings, investments, and a second property — rather than on income earned from work (which falls under Box 1). For 2026, the tax-free allowance (heffingsvrij vermogen) is €59,357 per person, and the tax itself is charged at a flat 36% on a deemed rate of return, not on your wealth directly. The deemed return for the "other assets" category (which includes most investments) rose to 6% for 2026, meaning the effective tax is roughly 36% of that assumed 6% return on wealth above the allowance, not 36% of the wealth itself.
This deemed-return system has been legally and politically contentious, since it can tax people on assumed returns even in years their actual investments performed worse (or lost money) — a major reform toward taxing actual realised return instead of a fixed deemed rate has been working through the Dutch legislative process, with implementation postponed multiple times, so the deemed-return approach described here remains the current system pending that reform taking effect.
Not directly — it taxes a deemed return calculated on your net wealth above the tax-free allowance, currently at 36%, rather than taxing the wealth balance itself. In practice this behaves similarly to a wealth tax, but the calculation method is technically a tax on assumed investment income.
Savings account balances, investment portfolios, a second home or rental property, and most other assets outside your main residence and pension savings, minus any qualifying debts — the calculation nets assets against liabilities before applying the tax-free allowance.
Dutch courts ruled the deemed-return system unlawful for taxpayers whose actual returns were lower than the assumed rate, since it could tax people more than their real investment income — the government has been working on a system based on actual realised returns instead, though implementation has been delayed several times.
Yes, for a period, employees with the 30% ruling can opt for partial non-resident tax status, which can exclude most non-Dutch assets from Box 3 entirely — a valuable secondary benefit of the ruling beyond the salary tax exemption itself.