DAFT Visa Requirements for Americans

Americans can get a Dutch residence permit under the Dutch-American Friendship Treaty by putting at least €4,500 of their own capital into a Dutch business. The Immigration and Naturalisation Service (IND) charges €423 for that application in 2026, and a first-time applicant has six months after the date on the decision letter to register the company and make the investment. Miss that window and the IND may revoke the permit. If you still reside in the United States while the clients pay you, a year of $80,000 in net self-employment earnings can still produce $11,303.64 of US self-employment tax.

The document the IND issues is a Type I temporary regular residence permit, valid for a maximum of two years, for work on a self-employed basis. US citizens do not need a provisional residence permit, called an MVV, before they travel. The cash question is whether €4,500 parked inside the business, plus the fee, the trade-register charge, and a year of Dutch health insurance, still leaves a margin after Dutch tax and the US return. The €4,500 has to move from your own account into the business and stay there, which is the paperwork problem covered in international money transfers.

What does the DAFT permit require?

You qualify by nationality and by one real activity in the Netherlands. The IND asks for US citizenship (Japan has a parallel treaty) and one of these situations: you trade between the Netherlands and the United States, or you develop and lead a Dutch business. Leading the business can mean a key position representing a US company, an independent profession, or a substantial capital investment. For most business forms that investment floor is €4,500. The exact floor depends on the form, so a structure other than a plain sole proprietorship needs a check against the IND capital rules before you pick it.

Who cannot use the profession path

The independent-profession route stops at government work and at the healthcare sector. A designer, developer, or shop owner can use the capital path. A clinician who needs Dutch professional registration is on a different permit. You also have to meet the general conditions that apply to every residence applicant, including a valid passport.

What does the DAFT visa cost before you earn?

As of October 2026, the cash you commit before profit is the capital, the IND fee, the Chamber of Commerce (KVK) registration, and Dutch basic health insurance. The €4,500 is your own money inside the business. It is still yours on the balance sheet, and it has to stay there. The other lines are spent.

Item	Amount	When it is due	If you skip it
Own capital in the Dutch business	€4,500 minimum for most forms	Within 6 months of the date on a first-time decision letter	The IND may revoke the permit
IND fee, self-employed including DAFT	€423	After the IND sends payment instructions; the same €423 applies to an extension	The application does not go through
KVK Business Register fee	€85.15 once	When the business is first registered	No trade-register entry for the extension file
Basic health insurance, government average	€1,884 a year (€157 a month)	Once you must insure as a resident	You pay care yourself, and a 6-month premium debt can move you onto the CAK defaulter scheme

Health insurance sits on top of the permit

The €1,884 figure is the 2026 average premium people pay an insurer, so a real quote can land under or over it. Children under 18 pay no premium. Adults face a mandatory deductible of €385 on most hospital and specialist care. You can raise that deductible in €100 steps, up to €500 extra, which puts the most you pay before the insurer at €885. GP visits, midwifery, and maternity care sit outside the deductible. On top of the premium, the tax office collects an income-related Health Insurance Act contribution. In 2026 that assessment rate is 4.85 percent, on contribution income up to €79,409, which caps the line at €3,851.34.

Data note: IND fees, the KVK fee, tax brackets, and the health-insurance average were checked in October 2026. IND fees are reindexed every 1 January. The 2026 schedule rose 4.4 percent.

How do you apply, and what is the six-month window?

Since April 2024, a first treaty application is no longer held until the company exists. You can be approved first. The six-month clock then starts on the date printed at the top of the decision letter. Register at KVK and place the capital in that window. A person who is switching from another Dutch residence purpose into the treaty has the opposite timing: send as much of the evidence as you already have with the application itself.

1. Confirm US citizenship and pick the treaty activity: cross-border trade, a key role for a US business, an independent profession outside government and healthcare, or the €4,500 capital investment.
2. Travel without an MVV. US nationality is on the IND exemption list. File the self-employed residence application by post within three months of arrival, or file from abroad through a Dutch mission. The form tells you where to send it.
3. Pay the €423 when the IND explains how. At an IND desk the fee can be paid by card or cash. By post, you wait for the payment letter.
4. Wait out the decision. The statutory period is 90 days. The IND can add up to six months if it asks the Netherlands Enterprise Agency (RVO) or the Ministry of Education, Culture and Science (OCW) for advice.
5. Within six months of the date on the decision letter, finish KVK registration and put at least €4,500 of your own capital into the business. Keep a trail from your personal account into the business account and onto the opening balance sheet.
6. Buy basic health insurance and keep the policy current. Budget €157 a month as the government average, then get a real quote.
7. Before the two-year permit ends, prepare annual accounts plus a balance sheet or income statement showing the company stayed active and the capital never left.

KVK registration for a sole proprietorship (eenmanszaak) does not need a notary. You start the filing and finish it at a KVK office. The one-time fee is €85.15 and it is deductible for entrepreneurs. You can hold only one eenmanszaak, though that single registration can carry more than one trade name. KVK forwards the details to the tax office, which decides whether you are a VAT entrepreneur and issues the VAT number.

Can you take a Dutch job, and can your family work?

Your own card allows self-employment. Employment for someone else requires a separate work permit, a tewerkstellingsvergunning (TWV), sponsored by that employer. The Dutch line on the card is “arbeid als zelfstandige toegestaan, arbeid in loondienst alleen toegestaan met tewerkstellingsvergunning.” After you have worked in the Netherlands for five years, you can ask the IND to change the card to “free to work,” and the TWV requirement drops. Until that change, a salary job is a different application, often a highly skilled migrant permit, handled alongside or instead of DAFT.

Partners and children

Family members admitted on the strength of your permit are annotated differently. Their card allows self-employment and paid work with no TWV. That is the practical split: you are tied to the business you used for the treaty, and a spouse can take an ordinary job. Children under 18 do not pay the health-insurance premium. Sponsoring family members has its own residence file, so build that application from the IND family rules, with the income evidence that file asks for.

The eenmanszaak is simple and personally exposed. KVK is explicit that business creditors can reach private savings and private property if the company cannot pay. A private limited company (BV) is a different legal person, with notary costs and payroll if you employ yourself. Choose the eenmanszaak when the downside is small. Move to a BV when contracts, staff, or a later salary structure justify the extra administration. The treaty capital floor still depends on the form you choose.

Do you still pay US self-employment tax?

You pay US self-employment tax if you still reside in the United States. If you reside in the Netherlands, the US-Netherlands totalization agreement assigns your self-employment coverage to the Dutch system. The agreement follows the country where you reside. The totalization agreements are what stop the same earnings from being charged twice. Without the certificate, the self-employment tax trap still applies to freelance profit.

Say you are a US product designer and your net self-employment earnings for the year are $80,000. This is a hypothetical used to show the IRS formula, with no other wages. The IRS generally applies self-employment tax to 92.35 percent of net earnings, so the base is $73,880. The 2026 self-employed rate is 15.3 percent, made up of 12.4 percent Social Security and 2.9 percent Medicare. That is $11,303.64. The Social Security portion stops at $184,500 of relevant earnings in 2026, and $73,880 is under that cap, so the full 15.3 percent applies. Net earnings of $400 or more are enough to owe the tax. An extra 0.9 percent Medicare tax applies only above $200,000 of earned income, or $250,000 if you file jointly, and it is not inside the 15.3 percent.

Ask the Sociale Verzekeringsbank (SVB) for certificate of coverage NL/USA 101. The Social Security Administration’s Netherlands pamphlet tells self-employed workers to attach a copy to the US tax return every year. The mailing address on that pamphlet is SVB, Department for International Secondment, Van Heuven Goedhartlaan 1, Postbus 357, 1180 KJ Amstelveen. Keep the certificate with the return workpapers. It documents the Social Security and Medicare exemption. US income tax on worldwide income still has to be filed.

The Dutch tax that replaces the US contribution

Dutch coverage has its own price. For 2026, if you are 66 or younger, box 1 tax on income from work and home is 35.75 percent up to €38,883, then 37.56 percent through €78,426, then 49.50 percent above that. The first band already includes national-insurance premiums: 8.10 percent income tax and 27.65 percent for the public insurance schemes. Profit from the eenmanszaak lands in that box.

Two entrepreneur reductions sit in front of those rates if you qualify. The self-employed deduction (zelfstandigenaftrek) is €1,200 in 2026 when you meet the hours test and have not reached state-pension age at the start of the year. The tax benefit of that deduction is calculated at 37.56 percent, which is €450.72 when you can use the full €1,200. A starter’s extra deduction of €2,123 is available when you were not an entrepreneur in at least one of the five prior calendar years and you used the self-employed deduction no more than twice in that stretch. After those deductions, the small-business profit exemption (mkb-winstvrijstelling) is 12.7 percent of the remaining profit, also with the benefit capped at a 37.56 percent rate, and the tax office applies it automatically. If the year is a loss, that exemption shrinks the loss you can use in a later year.

The hours test is 1,225 hours in the calendar year on the business. Starting in July does not cut the 1,225 to half. Quotes, bookkeeping, and time on the business website count. Hours you were merely “available” do not. You also have to spend more time on the business than on other work, unless you were not an entrepreneur in one of the prior five years, which is the usual case for someone arriving from a US job. Track the hours in a calendar. The tax office expects you to make them plausible with agendas, quotes, and invoices.

If Dutch-taxable turnover stays at or below €20,000 in the registration year and the year before, the small-business VAT scheme (kleineondernemersregeling, or KOR) is optional. You then charge no Dutch VAT and cannot reclaim VAT on costs. Turnover taxed in another country does not count toward that cap. Supplies the Netherlands taxes at 0 percent do count.

If the buyers are still in the United States, post the offer as a free listing on Brixaz and see who replies before you staff a Dutch sales process around a guess. Listings there are free. Use the replies as the demand test.

Can a DAFT freelancer use the 30% ruling?

A sole proprietor cannot. The Dutch tax office allows the expat scheme, still called the 30 percent facility, only when you are in paid employment. There is no employer and no wage-tax withholding on an eenmanszaak, so the facility has nothing to attach to. For 2026 the specific-expertise salary, excluding the tax-free allowance, has to be more than €48,013. Under age 30, with a Dutch master’s degree or an equivalent title, the floor is more than €36,497. You also have to have lived more than 150 kilometres from the Dutch border for more than 16 of the 24 months before the first working day. How that salary floor works in practice is covered in the Netherlands 30 percent ruling guide.

A BV that employs you can create the payroll relationship the facility requires, and the salary still has to clear the floor after the 30 percent split. That is a second build: notary, payroll, and a real employment contract. It is a later decision, made with a Dutch adviser, after the residence file is stable. Signing yourself onto a payroll on paper, with no substance, is how these files get refused.

What to do with the numbers

Write €6,892.15 on the planning sheet before you treat the permit as cheap, then file within three months of arrival if you apply inside the Netherlands. Finish KVK registration and the investment within six months of the decision date. If you will live in the Netherlands, order certificate NL/USA 101 and attach it to the US return. If you will keep residing in the United States, budget the self-employment tax on the IRS formula instead.

Renewal is a records problem. Keep the capital inside the company, keep the hours log toward 1,225, and keep accounts an outsider can read. The extension asks whether the business was active. A quiet balance with no customers is a weak file.

Data notes / sources checked

• IND: residence permit for a self-employed person, including the DAFT capital rule, the six-month window, the two-year maximum, and the work annotation. Page content last updated 13 October 2026.
• IND: fees and the 2026 fee indexation note (4.4 percent from 1 January 2026).
• IND: MVV exemptions for US nationals.
• KVK registration fee (€85.15) and the eenmanszaak overview.
• Rijksoverheid: 2026 health-insurance premium (€1,884 average, €385 deductible).
• Belastingdienst box 1 rates for 2026, zelfstandigenaftrek, mkb-winstvrijstelling, 30 percent facility, and Zvw percentages.
• SSA: totalization agreement with the Netherlands and IRS Topic 554, self-employment tax.