Route one: the yearly exemptions
Dutch gift tax works with yearly exemptions: a higher one for gifts to your children, a general one for everyone else — parents, siblings, friends. Amounts index every year (current figures are one search away on the Belastingdienst site). Inside the exemption: zero tax, zero filing. The quiet power move is repetition — the same exempt gift every January moves serious money over a decade, entirely tax free.
Route two: the structured larger gift
Above the exemptions, gift tax applies in bands: for children roughly 10% rising to 20%, for most others 30% rising to 40% — which is why large gifts are planned rather than wired. Children aged 18–40 can once receive a raised one-off exemption; the once-famous tax-free home gift, however, ended in 2024, so plans built on it need a redesign. Spreading a large intention across several exempt years usually beats one heroic transfer.
Route three: the loan from the holding
Sometimes the family needs capital rather than a present: a parent's renovation, a sibling's business. The holding can lend at businesslike terms — written agreement, market interest, schedule. The family gets bank-level money with family-level humanity; the holding earns interest inside your own system; and the principal stays your asset. Forgiving parts of the loan later, inside the yearly exemptions, combines both routes elegantly.
Two boundaries worth respecting
First: paying family for real work is payroll rather than gifting — a legitimate and often smart move, covered separately in a coming page. Second: gifts leave your protection. Money given is gone, also when the channel dips next year, so the reserve waterline from good year, bad year comes first. Generosity survives best on a funded balance sheet — the theme of the whole ladder at any amount.
The follow-up question
Most readers arrive here from creators/putting-family-on-payroll or move on to creators/your-holding-as-family-office.