What changes financially when you are on the road and live nowhere?
Tick where your income comes from. You then see which rules the Netherlands applies when you travel without a new country of residence: what the Netherlands keeps taxing, how you stay insured and what happens to your AOW. With the source, so you can check it yourself.
This applies to everyone who moves. Tick above what applies to you, and the rest will appear.
What the Netherlands taxes
Do you remain a resident, and which part of your income does the Netherlands keep taxing?
Deregistering is not the same as emigrating for tax purposes
For the Tax Administration you only emigrate when you go to live in another country permanently. If you are on the road and do not settle anywhere else, you can remain a resident of the Netherlands, even after deregistering from the municipality.
The Tax Administration looks at the circumstances. For example: at which address you spend most of your time, where your partner or family lives, where you work, where you are insured for medical costs, where your GP is and where your children go to school. Someone who is a little bit everywhere often keeps most ties with the Netherlands. If you remain a resident, you declare all your income, wherever in the world. In doubt? The Tax Administration itself advises: write a letter to your tax office and explain your situation.
Back within a year, and you never left
Did you stop living in the Netherlands and do you come back within a year, without having lived in another country in the meantime? Then for income tax you lived in the Netherlands the whole time.
This mainly affects people who travel for a year or less. There is one exception: if you show that during that time you were taxed as a resident in an EU country or a designated treaty country. Someone who lived nowhere on the road usually was not. The AOW and the Wlz have the same one-year rule.
- return within
- 1 year
Health insurance
How do you get insured, and what do you pay for it?
Whether you stay insured is decided by the SVB, not the municipality
Your Dutch health insurance hangs on your insurance under the Long-term Care Act (Wlz). That continues as long as the SVB sees you as a resident, even if you have deregistered.
The SVB works with three situations. If you are away for less than a year and temporarily, you remain a resident. If you are away for more than a year but not for good, you are still a resident in the first year, usually not after that, and after three years definitely not. If you leave for an indefinite period, it ends the day after you leave. As long as you are a resident, you must keep your health insurance. If you no longer are, you arrange international health insurance yourself. If you want certainty, ask the SVB for a Wlz assessment before you leave.
- less than a year, temporary
- you remain a resident
- more than a year, not definitive
- still a resident in the first year
- for an indefinite period
- no longer a resident from the day after departure
What the Netherlands doesn't let go of
Which Dutch obligation travels with you?
If your insurance stops, you have one year to insure yourself voluntarily
For every year you are not insured, you later get 2% less AOW. With a voluntary insurance at the SVB you close that gap, for at most ten years. You apply no later than one year after the day your compulsory insurance ended.
When your compulsory insurance ends is decided by the SVB, not the municipality. Have the SVB record that date and put the end of the year in your calendar. You must have been compulsorily insured for at least a year immediately before. The same period applies to the survivor's benefit (Anw): if you die uninsured, your partner and children get no benefit. If you already receive AOW, the accrual no longer matters. If the two of you travel together, everything applies to each of you separately.
- reduction per uninsured year
- 2% of your AOW
- apply
- no later than 1 year after your compulsory insurance ends
- duration
- at most 10 years
The premium for the voluntary AOW is on all your income
The premium is a percentage of your income in a year, from the Netherlands and from abroad. In 2026 the AOW premium is 17.9%, with a minimum and a maximum.
If you have little or no income, you pay the minimum premium. From an income of € 38,883 you pay the maximum premium. The premium for the Anw comes on top. The government sets the percentages again every year. Which proof of income the SVB asks of someone without a foreign tax authority is a question for the SVB.
- AOW premium 2026
- 17.9% of your income, at least € 569 and at most € 5,693
- maximum premium from
- an income of € 38,883
- Anw premium 2026
- 0.1%, at least € 3 and at most € 31
For inheritance and gifts, the Netherlands keeps counting you in
The Netherlands levies inheritance tax if the deceased lived in the Netherlands. If you remain a resident, the Netherlands simply levies it. If you are no longer a resident, a Dutch national still counts as a resident for ten years, on death and on gifts.
Without a new country of residence it is unclear when those ten years start. There is usually no other country that also levies. For a gift in the first year after leaving, the rule applies to everyone who lived in the Netherlands, also without Dutch nationality. Arrange a will and a power of attorney before you leave, so that someone in the Netherlands can act when you cannot be reached.
- residence fiction, inheritance and gifts
- 10 years
- residence fiction, gifts only, for everyone
- 1 year
If you inherit yourself, it is where the deceased lived that counts
For Dutch inheritance tax, the Tax Administration looks at the situation of the deceased, not at yours. If you inherit from a parent who lived in the Netherlands, you pay Dutch inheritance tax, even if you are on the road and live nowhere.
That applies above your exemption. It also applies if the deceased was a Dutch national who died within ten years of leaving the Netherlands. Make sure the notary and your family know how to reach you, and that your DigiD works for the tax return.
Rent benefit stops; healthcare benefit and child budget sometimes do not
If you live abroad, you are no longer entitled to rent benefit. Healthcare benefit can continue, for example if you keep your Dutch health insurance. You then only get the child budget as long as you receive child benefit from the SVB.
The Benefits Agency gets your new address from the municipality, but you stop the benefit yourself. Do it in time, and you will not have to pay anything back later. Rent benefit, healthcare benefit and childcare benefit you stop in Mijn toeslagen. The child budget you stop through the BelastingTelefoon, the tax helpline. If you stay registered while you know you will be away for more than eight months, you risk having to repay benefits.
Child benefit only stops once you are no longer insured
You receive child benefit as long as you are insured for it with the SVB. If you are no longer insured because you live or work outside the Netherlands, the child benefit stops.
As with your healthcare and your AOW, the SVB decides, not the municipality. On a trip of less than a year you usually stay insured. The SVB writes that after it stops, you often get child benefit from the other country. That rule assumes a country where you live or work. Someone who lives nowhere usually does not have that country. Ask the SVB before you leave, together with the Wlz assessment.
This is not tax advice
These are the rules that apply to your situation. What they add up to is not shown here. On the road there is no new country of residence. So there is no tax treaty that divides the right to tax, no favourable regime and no healthcare arrangement through a treaty country. Almost everything hangs on one question: do you remain a resident of the Netherlands for tax purposes? The Tax Administration decides that on the circumstances, not the municipality. For your healthcare and your AOW, the SVB decides. Put your situation to both before you leave, and take this list to a tax adviser who knows international situations. Then you know which questions to ask.
Still deciding between countries? Put the rules of two or three countries side by side
Then actually doing it
Knowing which rules apply is the first half. The second is applying them in time: in the right order, without missing a deadline, and with your documents at hand.
Every step on one list, free
Not ready to start yet? Then you get the departure checklist for a life on the road: every step in order, to print and tick off. With it, five mails in a week and a half about the pitfalls and the real costs. If the rules for a life on the road change, you'll hear about it. After that we ask once where your plans stand, send one offer, and now and then one thing that fits your moment. No newsletter, and you can switch it off at any time.