Meeting administrative obligations

What does the anonymous rate mean?

When an employer fails to properly record the identity of an employee, he or she is considered an anonymous employee and the anonymous rate applies. In this way, the Internal Revenue Service prevents the anonymous employee from paying too little tax.

Applying the anonymous rate means the following:

• A rate of 52% applies to the wage tax/ national insurance contributions to be withheld.
• Wage tax credit does not apply.
• The employer does not take into account the maximum premium wage for employee insurance premiums.
• The employer does not take into account the maximum contribution wage for the employer healthcare insurance contributions.
• The employer does not take into account the maximum contribution wage for the income-related healthcare insurance contribution.

When does the anonymous rate apply?

In the situations below, an employer must apply the anonymous rate:

• The employee did not provide his name, address, place of residence or citizen service number (BSN) before the first day of work. Or on the first day of work, if the time of hiring and the first day of work coincide.
• The identity of the employee receiving wages from present employment has not been established.
• The information has not been kept (in the correct way) in the payroll records. This only applies to employees with wages from present employment.
• The employer knows or could have known that the employee is providing incorrect data.
• The employee does not have a valid residence or work permit.

Wages from previous employment

If an employer pays wages from previous employment, the anonymous rate must be applied in the following situations:

• The employee did not provide his name, address, place of residence or citizen service number (BSN) prior to the first payment.
• The employer knows or could have known that the employee is providing incorrect information.

Processing in the payroll tax return

Address
Is the employee's home address not known? Then you may use a mailing address. However, the anonymous rate remains applicable.

Employee number
If the BSN is not known, you may not use a fictitious BSN. In that case, use a personnel number and list it in the Personnel Number section. The personnel number may not be used as a BSN. The anonymous rate still applies.

Table code
Code payroll tax table 940 applies to anonymous employees.

Final tax levy
Use a separate table for final levy. You can find this at the bottom of tables 5, 6a and 6b in the Payroll Tax Handbook.

BSN
Is the BSN already known? Then enter the BSN and employee number once in the next period. You may not correct the number in previous periods. There is an exception if the BSN is not known until the employee is no longer employed. Then you can only supplement the data with a period correction.

Correction of incorrect BSN
Have you previously used an incorrect BSN and want to correct it? This is only possible by withdrawing the declaration line with the wrong BSN and submitting a new declaration line with the correct BSN.

Do not correct

When there is no longer an anonymous employee, you may not correct previous declaration periods in which the anonymous rate has been applied. As of this moment, you will again take into account the maximum premium wage for the employee insurance and the maximum contribution wage for the income-related healthcare insurance contribution.

Does this still fall within the calendar year? Then you apply the maximums for employee insurance and Zvw to the total wage of the calendar year. As a result, the amount of the income-related healthcare insurance contribution and employee insurance contributions may be lower or negative. This is due to the application of rolling cumulative calculation.

For employees
The employee can offset or get back the excess wage tax withheld via the income tax return.

Do correct

If the anonymous rate was wrongly applied due to an error in the administration, you may correct it. This is possible, for example, if the employee did supply his BSN on time, but it had not yet been processed in the administration.