Conditions for applying for an A1 certificate

The following conditions apply to all employees for whom you request an A1 certificate:

• The employee will stay employed by you for the period that he or she is working outside the Netherlands. If the posting is within the same company, this can include employees with inactive or dormant contracts. If your employee returns to the Netherlands, his or her employment with you will continue as before.
• you will continue to pay the employee’s wages or salary during the work period outside the Netherlands
• you will pay social insurance contributions for the employee in the Netherlands during the work period in the other country. This can be via a shadow payroll if the posting is within the same company. If you do not pay social insurance contributions, the A1 certificate can be cancelled.

The following conditions apply for a posting:

• your employee was covered by the Dutch social insurance schemes for at least 1 month up to the date they started working outside the Netherlands 
• your employee is not replacing an employee who was posted earlier and whose posting period has expired. This does not apply if the replacement is due to illness.
• your company has substantial activities in the Netherlands. This means that your company must not be just a letter-box company.

If you do not meet all the conditions, you should contact us.

A1 certificates and working in 2 or more EU (European Union) countries

If your employee works in 2 or more EU countries, each of those countries has 2 months to object to the A1 certificate if they wish. The 2-month period starts from the date the certificate is issued. If we do not receive an objection within 2 months, the certificate becomes final.

Interruption of the posting period

If the posting period is interrupted by more than 2 months, you will have to apply for a new A1 certificate. Holidays or periods of illness are not regarded as interruptions.

Different periods apply for certain countries

• For Egypt, the applicable period is 3 months 
• For North Macedonia, South Korea and Japan, the applicable period is 12 months

Your employee's personal details

You must state your employee's BSN (Burgerservicenummer) and date of birth on the application form. If you have applied for the employee before, these details will be enough.

If it is the first time you have applied for an employee, fill in their home address (where they are registered as living with their municipality/gemeente). If your employee does not live in the Netherlands but in another EU (European Union) country, and will be working in 2 or more EU countries, you must apply to the social security organisation in the country where the employee lives.

If that organisation decides that your employee is not insured in that country but possibly in the Netherlands, you should apply to us within 2 months. You can use the paper application form for this. At the same time, you should send us the decision you received from the social insurance organisation in the other country.

If we need more information, we will get in touch with the contact person you have given on the application form.

Multiple payroll tax numbers

If your company uses more than 1 payroll tax number, send us 1 application form for each group of workers with the same payroll tax number. Always give the payroll tax number of the employee's official employer.

After we have taken a decision on your application, you will receive an email message. You can then see the decisions we have taken and the names of the employees concerned via TWinternet.

We will send our decision and the A1 certificate to your employee’s Message Box. If your employee does not have a Message Box, we will send it to them by post.

You will not receive a copy of the A1 certificate. The certificate will only be sent to your employee. But you can read the details of the certificates we have issued on TWinternet.

It is important to inform us of changes in your employee’s situation because their insurance position in the Netherlands may also change as a result, even if you pay Dutch social insurance contributions.

If you have informed us of a change in your circumstances, we will send you an email after we have entered the new information in our system. We will also let you know if we send a new certificate to your employee. You will also be able to see this in TWinternet.