Your partner stays in the Netherlands: is the money you send taxed?

You leave for America for your work. Your partner stays in the Netherlands for most of the year, in your house, without an income of their own. You transfer money every month for the household. The question that always comes up: is that money taxed? No. Not for you, not for your partner, not in America and not in the Netherlands. You pay US income tax on your salary, and what you transfer afterwards is net money moving from one account to another within the marriage.

That is the short answer. The long answer is about where the tax in this situation does sit, and about two questions that weigh more than the transfer. The visa side is in Coming along on an L-2, the Dutch side of a partner who does come along in Partner comes along without a job.

Why the transfer itself is not taxed

Dutch income tax. Money from your spouse is not income. There is no box it falls into: no wages, no benefit, no income from other activities. Your partner simply files a return, and these transfers appear nowhere in it.

Dutch gift tax. A gift is an enrichment out of generosity. Supporting your spouse is the opposite of that: meeting a legal duty. Book 1 of the Dutch Civil Code says that spouses owe each other help and support and provide each other with what is needed (article 81), and that the costs of the household are borne by their incomes (article 84). Whoever meets that duty is not making a gift, and so has nothing to declare either. If you are married in community of property it is not even a transfer: the money is already jointly yours, whatever name is on the account.

Two footnotes. First: a large amount outside living costs is a gift question, for example a house or an investment portfolio that you put in your partner's name under a prenuptial agreement. Between spouses the ordinary annual exemption of € 2,769 (2026) then applies, and above it the partner rate. Second: a Dutch citizen who emigrates remains liable for Dutch gift tax for ten years (Inheritance and Gift Tax Act, article 3). So that question does not disappear with your departure.

US gift tax. America does not treat supporting your spouse as a gift either. For genuine gifts to a spouse without US citizenship there is in addition a separate annual exclusion: the first $ 194,000 per year do not count (2026, Rev. Proc. 2025-32, section 4.42). Above that you file Form 709, and you only pay tax once, over your lifetime, you exceed the lifetime exemption, which in 2026 stands at fifteen million dollars. In practice: nothing.

Item	Rule or amount
Transfer for the household	no income, no gift: untaxed in both countries
Genuine gift between spouses, Netherlands	exemption € 2,769 per year (2026), above it the partner rate
Gift tax liability after emigration	ten years for anyone with Dutch nationality
Genuine gift to a spouse without US citizenship	first $ 194,000 per year excluded (2026), above it Form 709
Tax-free allowance box 3	€ 59,357 per person (2026)
Substantial presence test	31 days this year and 183 over three years (1, 1/3, 1/6)
Closer connection exception	fewer than 183 days in the US, tax home in the Netherlands, Form 8840 every year
Deregistering with the municipality	required when expecting eight months or more per year outside the Netherlands

Where the tax does sit

Your US return. Married to someone who is not a US resident, you file by default as married filing separately: the least favourable brackets. You can choose to treat your partner as a US resident for tax purposes and file jointly. If your partner has no income, that often saves a lot. The price: your partner gets a US taxpayer number, together you report your worldwide income, the Dutch accounts and possibly the house end up in the US reporting duties, and the choice is sticky. The IRS says in so many words that you can make it only once in your life: once ended, you cannot make it again in any later year. This is the calculation for an adviser who knows both countries, and with a transfer the employer often pays that adviser.

The money that stays in the Netherlands. Whatever is on your partner's account on 1 January counts for box 3, above the tax-free allowance of € 59,357 per person (2026). You are no longer tax partners once you live outside the Netherlands, so your partner only has their own tax-free allowance. A joint account counts for half with your partner; your half falls outside Dutch box 3, because a non-resident is only taxed here on Dutch real estate. A buffer for a year of living costs therefore costs little or nothing. A large sum that you park in your partner's name costs box 3 tax every year.

The house. For your partner it remains the owner-occupied home in box 1, with their own share of the mortgage interest deduction. Your half is no longer your main residence and moves to box 3 for you as a non-resident taxpayer; your share of the deduction lapses. The rule for people who are not tax partners but do own a home together was written for exactly this situation. The tax treaty lets the Netherlands tax the house; in America you declare nothing on it as long as it is not rented out.

Does your partner still live in the Netherlands, and you really not?

For the tax office, emigration is not a box ticked at the town hall but a weighing of facts. It names them itself: at which address do you spend most of your time, where do your partner and family live, where do you work, where are you insured, where is your GP, where do your children go to school. Whoever leaves while partner, children and the family home stay in the Netherlands is the textbook case in which the inspector argues that you still live here.

The tax treaty then decides. You have a home in both countries; your personal ties are in the Netherlands and your economic ties in America; the next test is where you habitually live, and that is America. So you win that weighing, but it has to be set up properly in the return for your emigration year, with the facts attached. On a good salary that is not work to do yourself. Also adjust your provisional assessment before you leave.

For your partner the reverse is true. They remain a resident as long as life here demonstrably goes on: the house, the GP, the insurance, the days. Then the registration, the BSN, the DigiD, the Dutch health insurance and the AOW accrual simply stay in place, as long as the SVB regards your partner as a resident. Have that confirmed before you leave, not after.

One thing the registration does not bring: healthcare allowance. A spouse is always your allowance partner, even when living abroad, and their worldwide income counts. With a salary that carries a family in two countries, nothing of it remains.

If your partner comes over more and more often

After a year your partner may want to spend more time in America. Then two lines move, and both apply per person.

The Dutch line: whoever reasonably expects to be outside the Netherlands eight months or more per year files a notification of departure. Then the registration, the GP, the Dutch health insurance and the AOW accrual stop (voluntary continuation is possible, apply to the SVB within a year), and the house becomes box 3 for both of you, without interest deduction.

The American line is more treacherous, because it weighs three years: all days of this year, a third of last year and a sixth of the year before. Someone who spent 120 days in America in the first year and 170 in the second is already at 210 in that second year and is liable to US tax, unless she stays under 183 actual days, keeps her tax home demonstrably in the Netherlands and files Form 8840 every year. As soon as your partner is a US tax resident, you are one household for America: filing jointly becomes the obvious choice, the Dutch accounts are reported, and the question about the transfer disappears entirely.

Count days from the first trip, not months. One day over 183 costs the closer connection exception for that whole year, and the three-year weighting always pulls a previous year back in.

What do you put to whom?

Three conversations, in this order and before the deregistration.

• Your employer, before you sign. Are you seconded by the Dutch company, or hired locally by the American one? Seconded means staying in the Dutch social security system for up to five years under the treaty, with AOW accrual and without US Social Security. Local means your AOW accrual stops on the day you leave. And: who pays the tax adviser in both countries?
• A tax adviser who knows both countries. The choice between filing separately and jointly in America, the set-up of your emigration year in the Netherlands, and the house.
• The SVB and your partner's health insurer. Does your partner remain a resident for them at this rhythm? Ask in writing, with the expected split of the days attached.