Is Your Salary Gross or Net?
As an IT student, you may be wondering if your salary is gross or net. Short answer, it’s gross. But often as you work parttime, gross will almost be net due to the discount the government gives.
Gross salary is the total amount of money you earn before taxes and deductions are taken out.
It’s built up out of a base salary, 8.33% ‘vakantietoeslag’, and 8% ‘paid vacation hours’.
Let’s suppose your base salary is 15 EUR/hour. You can choose if you would like to have your vakantietoeslag paid out 4-weekly, or yearly. Per worked hour, you would then receive 8.33%*15 EUR/hour = 1.24 EUR/hour additionally.
Next to that, you save vacation hours per worked hour. Hence, if you have worked 100 hours in total, you will receive 8%*100 hours = 8 hours that will be paid out to you, without having to work for it.
So, your total gross salary would then be 15 + 1.24 + 1.20 = 17.44 EUR/hour.
Net salary is the amount of money you actually receive after taxes and deductions are taken out.
What’s the difference?
The difference between gross and net salary is the amount of taxes and deductions that are taken out of your paycheck. Taxes are taken out to fund government programs, such as Social Security, Medicare, and income tax. Deductions can include things like health insurance, retirement savings, and union dues.
Tips for IT students
If you’re an IT student, here are a few tips for understanding your salary:
- Use an online calculator like this one to calculate your net salary based on your gross salary. Make sure you pick the base gross salary for the calculator excluding the vakantietoeslag and vacation hours.
- You can also check the net salary by checking the ‘Loontabel‘ of the Belastingdienst
- Make sure you have ‘Loonheffingskorting’ enabled if you only work via CodeHive. If you have multiple employers, enable the Loonheffingskorting at the job where you earn most.