Netherlands readies employers for 2027 Salary Transparency Act

The Dutch Salary Transparency Act (Wet loontransparantie) is scheduled to take effect on 1 January 2027, transposing a 2023 EU directive. The law obliges companies to disclose salary ranges during recruitment, ban requests for applicants’ previous salaries, and give employees the right to request information about their own pay and the average pay of colleagues doing comparable work, broken down by gender. Employers with more than 100 staff must submit periodic reports on average wages, while firms with 50 or more must be able to justify any pay differences on objective criteria such as job grading, performance or experience. HR departments are advised to start now by informing managers and recruiters of the new rules, updating recruitment processes, establishing clear functional‑valuation systems, and deciding how salary information will be made available to staff – either via self‑service tools or manual processes. Industry experts from SAP, AFAS and Glastuinbouw Nederland highlight the need to align internal job categories with tax definitions and to use existing payroll data to support the required reporting.