How can you, as an entrepreneur or director-major shareholder (DGA) in the Netherlands, pay less tax by using your partner’s tax credit?
In this article, I explain what the general tax credit is and how you can maximize it by increasing your partner’s income and make sure you will pay less taxes!
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General tax credit

The general tax credit is a discount on income tax and national insurance contributions. Anyone who has taxable income in the Netherlands is entitled to the general tax credit. The amount of the general tax credit depends on your income. When your income increases, the general tax credit decreases. The credit cannot be higher than the income tax and national insurance contributions you must pay. In 2023, the maximum general tax credit is €3,070. If your income is higher than €22,661, the general tax credit decreases by 6.095% of the income above this threshold. If your income is higher than €73,031, the general tax credit is zero.
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Paying less tax with your partner’s tax credit

If you have a partner who has no or low income, you can divide your income from the BV so that the general tax credit is used optimally. This can lead to a benefit of €3,070.
The tax credit is a maximum of €3,070 (for people who have not yet reached retirement age). This can be partially transferred to your partner. However, this is limited to an amount of €589. Therefore, it is smarter to ensure that your partner has taxable income, even if they have no income. This allows you to use the maximum of €3,070, resulting in a maximum benefit of €3,070.


To ensure that the tax credit is used optimally, you need to make sure that your partner, who has no income, also gets their own income. There are several ways to do this:
Take your partner into employment with your BV.
Pay out dividends from your BV and attribute them to your partner.
Attribute a portion of your box 3 income to your partner.

Giving a salary to your partner

You can take your partner into employment with your BV. If your partner works for your BV, they will need to earn a salary. The general tax credit can be applied to this salary. The salary must be determined commercially. This means that actual work must be done to award a salary. In addition, the work must also match the salary level. If you are only looking for tax benefits, this is obviously very cumbersome.
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Attributing dividends to your partner

Receiving dividends from your BV results in tax that must be paid in box 2. The box 2 rate for 2023 is 26.9%. This means that with a dividend payment of €11,500, you can already fully utilize the general tax credit. It is allowed to divide income in box 2 between both partners in the income tax return. For example, you can assign the dividend payment to your partner and the withheld dividend tax to yourself, enabling you to fully utilize the tax credit.

Below is an example calculation:
Suppose there is a dividend payment of €11,500 and 15% dividend tax is withheld by the BV. You assign this withheld dividend tax to yourself. You assign the €11,500 to your partner who has no income. Your partner still has to pay 26.9% tax on this amount, which amounts to €3,094. Because your partner’s income is higher than €3,070, the entire tax credit can be claimed. As you can see, this is an easy method to fully utilize the general tax credit.

Assigning Box 3 income to your partner
It is also possible to divide the income in box 3 between both partners, just like with the assignment of dividends. However, in order to reach a tax amount higher than the general tax credit of €3,070, you need to have a significant amount of wealth. Therefore, this method is less easily applicable for the average DGA.

From the above, it is clear that assigning dividends to your partner is the easiest method to maximize the general tax credit.

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