ZZP (sole proprietorship) in short
A ZZP (eenmanszaak, “sole trader”) is the simplest way to run a business in the Netherlands: you and the business are legally the same entity. Bookkeeping is simpler than a BV’s, with no separate payroll administration if you have no employees, and most first-time DAFT applicants start here because it’s faster and cheaper to set up. The trade-off is personal liability: there’s no legal separation between your business debts and your personal assets.
BV (private limited company) in short
A BV (besloten vennootschap) is a private limited company, roughly equivalent to a US LLC. It’s a separate legal entity, so your personal liability is limited to what you’ve invested in the company. That protection comes with more overhead: you need to run payroll even if you’re the only employee, file separate corporate tax returns, and generally pay an accountant more to keep the books.
The “break-even income” question: what we actually know
Several immigration and tax sites publish a specific income figure, variously €67,000, €69,000, or €70,000, as the point where switching to a BV becomes “worthwhile.” We are not publishing any of those three numbers as fact. Looking closely, each one appears to be borrowed from the Dutch 30%-ruling’s minimum salary, a government figure that is indexed and changes every year, rather than three genuinely different rules.
The official figure doesn’t match any of them. For 2026, the Belastingdienst sets the 30%-ruling salary norm at a taxable annual salary above €48,013, or €36,497 for people under 30 with a master’s degree.
Does the 30%-ruling apply to you?
The 30%-ruling is a tax facility for employees recruited from abroad: one of the Belastingdienst’s conditions is that the employee works for the employer applying for it. As a sole trader (ZZP) you have no employer, so it doesn’t apply. Whether you can use it as a director employed by your own BV depends on further conditions, so ask a Dutch tax adviser before you choose a structure for this reason.
The honest version of the ZZP-or-BV question is a trade-off, not a threshold: weigh the tax position against the payroll and bookkeeping overhead for your own expected income, ideally with a bookkeeper who can run your actual numbers.
Next steps
Whichever structure you choose, you’ll need the same minimum capital. See Opening balance sheet & the €4,500 capital, and for the same renewal evidence later, see Extension and renewal.