This is definitely a source of friction with the tax service.
A couple of years ago, the Dutch tax service was trying to tackle the problem of fake self-employed people who were really just employees without the same rights, pensions, etc. The Dutch postal service PostNL was notorious for firing firing all their mail deliverers and hiring them back as self-employed people who still had to wear their uniform and work according to their schedule. And somehow the tax service approved that. But self-employed programmers who hop between big projects, negotiate their own pay (which tends to the high side) and have a lot of control over the projects they work on and the way they work on them, suddenly have to prove that they're really "zelfstandig", self-sufficient.
It's frustrating. I recently went back to regular employment and I hated it. Tons of extra rules, limited vacation days, and significantly lower pay. I guess I prefer being in control, saving for my own retirement, and going on vacation as often or as little as I like. Seriously, how many vacation days I had left used to give me stress. It's significantly healthier for me to be self-employed.
The way I see it: if a large company can have a single client and just rent out all their employees to that single company, why can't a small one-man company do the same?
And I think I'm a lot more self-sufficient than that company; if my contract ends, I can easily get a new contract elsewhere for myself. But if their contract ends, they need to find new work for all of their employees at once, and they'll likely fire some or all of them, making the whole job security argument moot. Their risk is higher than mine, and their security isn't. I really think having lots of self-employed contractors like me is better for the industry than the overhead of having to organise into companies.
In Poland the government is in on it when it comes to specialists of any kind, as this is how they prevent people from emigrating to the west or "emigrating" (tax-wise only) to the Czech Republic, which offers a similar deal.
For a while it was possible to have a flat 5% income tax rate, but I guess someone pointed out that it's too generous, so the best option now is a flat 12% and 3% healthcare contributions.
A couple of years ago, the Dutch tax service was trying to tackle the problem of fake self-employed people who were really just employees without the same rights, pensions, etc. The Dutch postal service PostNL was notorious for firing firing all their mail deliverers and hiring them back as self-employed people who still had to wear their uniform and work according to their schedule. And somehow the tax service approved that. But self-employed programmers who hop between big projects, negotiate their own pay (which tends to the high side) and have a lot of control over the projects they work on and the way they work on them, suddenly have to prove that they're really "zelfstandig", self-sufficient.
It's frustrating. I recently went back to regular employment and I hated it. Tons of extra rules, limited vacation days, and significantly lower pay. I guess I prefer being in control, saving for my own retirement, and going on vacation as often or as little as I like. Seriously, how many vacation days I had left used to give me stress. It's significantly healthier for me to be self-employed.
The way I see it: if a large company can have a single client and just rent out all their employees to that single company, why can't a small one-man company do the same?
And I think I'm a lot more self-sufficient than that company; if my contract ends, I can easily get a new contract elsewhere for myself. But if their contract ends, they need to find new work for all of their employees at once, and they'll likely fire some or all of them, making the whole job security argument moot. Their risk is higher than mine, and their security isn't. I really think having lots of self-employed contractors like me is better for the industry than the overhead of having to organise into companies.