What actually happens if I get ill?
This is a question many freelancers ask themselves from time to time. Suddenly you're stuck at home and your income disappears completely.
It's a situation nobody likes to picture. But imagine it does happen: surely you'd want everything properly arranged? You can do this with disability insurance (AOV). For people in employment, this is arranged automatically through their employer, but that's not the case for entrepreneurs. They have to arrange it themselves, which is why they're more likely to let it slide. On top of that, it adds to your costs, so many entrepreneurs don't see the AOV as something positive. Until the unthinkable unexpectedly happens…
Because of this risk, after a great deal of negotiation and deliberation, there is now a bill to make the AOV mandatory. Eddy van Hijum (Minister of Social Affairs and Employment) will go through the proposal and amend it where necessary. This means it will still be a while before the insurance is available, but the first steps have been taken.
The current proposal
- The basic insurance becomes mandatory. This means you receive a benefit at the level of the minimum wage if you become unable to work. If you earn less than the minimum wage, you receive a benefit of 70% of your most recently earned income.
- The premium will be around 6.5% of the income you earn, with a maximum of about €195 a month. This premium is tax-deductible.
- The insurance kicks in after one year. This is sooner than for most people in employment, who often have a longer waiting period.
- You can choose additional options on top of this insurance.
The current proposal has drawn a lot of responses from the public, the implementing agencies and the Tax Authority (Belastingdienst). As a result, the minister no longer expects to be able to present the proposal to the House of Representatives (Tweede Kamer) before the summer of 2025. Once the proposal has been submitted and everything goes according to plan, it will take another 2 to 3 years before the law comes into force. So you still have plenty of time to prepare everything before the mandatory AOV applies.