The Dutch Self-Employed Act. What it gets right, what can be better and why your response counts too

The Dutch government has opened a public consultation on the Self-Employed Act (Zelfstandigenwet). Anyone can respond up to and including Thursday 29 October 2026. Quilyx is responding as well. This article explains what the act regulates, what it gets right, which improvements we propose and how you can respond yourself.

What the act regulates

The act adds a safe harbor to the Dutch Civil Code. It is a list of seven requirements. Anyone who meets all seven is certain to be working as a self-employed professional. Anyone who misses one falls back on today's rules: the weighing of all circumstances of the case.

Three requirements concern the self-employed professional as an entrepreneur:

three clients in the previous and the current calendar year
a minimum amount per year spent on provisions, such as disability insurance, a pension and liability cover
the basics in order: a registration with the Chamber of Commerce (KVK), a VAT number, a business bank account and own invoices

Four requirements concern the assignment:

both parties want to work together as client and self-employed professional
the self-employed professional decides how the work is done, the client decides the result
the self-employed professional decides where and when the work is done
the self-employed professional works at their own expense and risk

The intended start date is 1 January 2028.

What it gets right

The proposal gets three things right:

The requirements are fixed in advance. Client and self-employed professional can check where they stand at the start of an assignment.
Entrepreneurship gets its own place in the law. Until now it followed from case law only.
Today's room remains. Anyone who misses one of the seven requirements is assessed under the rules that already apply today.

That fits what one of the founders of Quilyx wrote about this act earlier: if you choose entrepreneurship and practice your profession at your own expense and risk, that should simply be possible.

Where it pinches

Two requirements fit poorly with the market we work in.

Three clients in two calendar years. As self-employed professionals we lead programs that last two to three years on average and deliver a result agreed in advance. That is one client at a time. The explanatory memorandum to the act describes this situation itself: one large assignment of three years only qualifies when the self-employed professional takes on two smaller assignments alongside it. Leading a program with final responsibility is a full working week. Two full assignments on top of that structurally mean more than that.

The hourly rate. According to the explanatory memorandum, a fee based only on hours worked falls outside the safe harbor. Buying by the hour is exactly how clients hire.

What our figures show

With Freelyx, our assignment portal, we follow the requests of more than 500 clients every day. We counted all assignments that appeared between 3 August and 2 October 2026 on 35 public hiring desks and marketplaces and that are open to self-employed professionals. There are 2,322 of them.

64% ask for 32 hours per week or more
13% ask for 16 hours per week or less
70% have a first term of six months or longer
49% mention an option to extend
the hourly rate is the standard: three of the 2,322 requests mention a fixed price only

So the market itself asks for one client at a time, full time, for a longer period and by the hour. Small assignments to do alongside a large one are scarce.

Our main proposal: count per assignment

We support the aim of the requirement: a self-employed professional stands free from one dominant client. A professional who works for a different client assignment after assignment shows exactly that.

That is why we propose a second way of counting, alongside the existing one:

Test at the start of an assignment.
Count the last three clients of the self-employed professional, including the new one. If those are three different clients, the requirement is met.
The outcome holds for the agreed term, up to a maximum of 36 months per assignment. That is the term Dutch employment law uses for temporary contracts.

An example. A program manager leads a program at client A for three years and then a program at client B for three years. The next assignment starts at client C. At that start the last three clients are A, B and C: three different ones. This program manager works in the safe harbor.

This keeps the aim intact. Anyone who stays tied to one client over a long period falls outside the safe harbor. The count has one test moment and can be verified with three contracts. And the count stays the same during illness, pregnancy, care for relatives or a period of looking for a new assignment.

Four additional proposals

Allow the test at the level of the professional's own company as well. Many professionals work from a private limited company (bv), a professional partnership (maatschap) or a general partnership (vof). The act tests the person. A company with more than one working owner or with staff spreads its risk across more people and more clients. Let its clients, provisions and invoices count for the owner who does the work.

When working through an agency, count the end client. The client chooses the contract route. More and more clients place all their hiring with one service provider. In our figures, one service provider published assignments from 83 clients in two months. Anyone who works for three of them in succession counts under the bill as someone with one client. Quilyx is an agency itself and therefore has an interest in this proposal.

Allow the hourly rate in the safe harbor. The hourly rate is a pricing form. The entrepreneurial risk sits in the business: payment for hours worked only, an income that stops in case of illness or early termination, and liability for the work. Risk follows influence. Long-running assignments overrun mainly because of decision-making at the client. A decision that moves to the next meeting quickly costs a month or a quarter. The hourly rate places that risk with the party that has the influence. We work in both forms ourselves: advisory assignments and program reviews as fixed-result assignments, programs at an hourly rate.

Align the act with the government's own hiring. On government hiring desks, 81% of the requests mention an hourly rate and 86% an option to extend. So the government itself buys in the way the bill keeps outside the safe harbor. The simplest route: the safe harbor matches the way clients buy.

How to respond yourself

With the consultation, the ministry wants to test whether the proposal matches practice. You know that practice: as a self-employed professional or as a client who hires self-employed professionals.

Responding works like this:

Go to internetconsultatie.nl/verduidelijkingzelfstandigenwet.
Choose "Reageren op deze consultatie" (respond to this consultation).
Write your response in the text box. You can add a document.

The ministry asks six questions: about provisions, starters, part-time self-employed professionals, working through an agency, rules per sector and working at your own expense and risk. You can respond to every part. The consultation closes on Thursday 29 October 2026.

About this article. The practical experience, the positions and the choices in this article are ours. We wrote and edited it together with AI, which helped with the research, the counting, the working out and the wording. Quilyx carries the editorial responsibility.