AOW, pension and tax in Czechia: a treaty from 1974 and an exemption that stacks

Most of the Netherlands' newer tax treaties place the pension with the source state. The treaty with Czechia isn't new. It dates from 1974, was concluded with Czechoslovakia, still applies to Czechia in full and has never been amended. And here that is good news.

What the treaty says

Article 19: pensions and other similar remuneration paid to a resident of one of the States in consideration of past employment shall be taxable only in that State. So your occupational pension goes exclusively to Czechia, without threshold and without Dutch source-state tax.

The treaty has no social security article. Your AOW therefore falls under article 23, the residual article: items of income not expressly mentioned in the foregoing articles shall be taxable only in that State. Also exclusively Czechia.

So the Netherlands lets go — provided you apply for the wage tax exemption at the Dutch tax authority, with a Czech certificate of residence. Without that application your fund keeps withholding and you only get it back after a year.

The exception: the government pension

Article 20 paragraph 2: a pension paid by the Dutch state or a Dutch public body for services rendered may be taxed in that State — unless you're a resident and a national of Czechia.

So ABP and every other government pension stay with the Netherlands, and that part doesn't fall under the Czech exemption below. Czechia in turn exempts it from its own tax: on the Czech side the treaty works with exemption, not with a credit. Whoever holds Czech nationality alongside the Dutch sees this pension go to Czechia too.

What Czechia does with it itself: the exemption that stacks

This is where it gets interesting. The Czech income tax act exempts regularly paid pensions from a mandatory pension scheme up to thirty-six times the minimum wage in force on 1 January of the year — and the act expressly adds that benefits from a foreign mandatory insurance of the same kind count.

The minimum wage has stood at 22,400 crowns since 1 January 2026. Thirty-six times that amount is 806,400 crowns a year, roughly thirty-three thousand euros. Up to that amount a pension from a mandatory scheme is untaxed in Czechia.

Your AOW falls under that without discussion: a statutory, mandatory scheme. For your Dutch occupational pension the question is whether it counts as a mandatory insurance of the same kind. A mandatory industry-wide pension is a stronger case than a voluntary annuity, and that is exactly the question you put to a tax adviser who knows both systems — not to a forum.

What happens above the limit

Whatever comes out above the exemption falls into the ordinary brackets: 15% up to thirty-six times the average wage — for 2025 that was 1,676,052 crowns — and 23% above it. From that comes off a basic tax credit of 30,840 crowns per person per year, which in practice makes the first two hundred thousand crowns above the exemption untaxed.

Work it out on your amounts. For an average Dutch pension it comes down to paying little to nothing in Czechia, and that is exactly why it's worth not forgetting the wage tax exemption in the Netherlands.

Your AOW comes along in full

Apart from the tax: within the EU the AOW is paid without reduction. Report your move to the SVB in time, with the date, your Czech address and your bank details. Your further accrual stops on the day of deregistration; whoever leaves before AOW age can continue it voluntarily.