Working from Aruba as a United States resident

At a glance

Rule coverage

What the rules say about Aruba

The rules below are the ones most likely to shape a stay in Aruba, in plain words and with the source behind each one. Your own report tells you which of them apply to you.

1. Significant issueImmigration and visa

   A Dutch passport does not give you the right to live or work in Aruba

   Aruba is an OCT, not the EU, so Dutch nationality does not carry free movement here the way it would inside the EU. DIMAS states it in writing, because Aruba stayed party to the BUPO and ECHR human rights treaties, the law is allowed to treat Nederlanders in the Kingdom differently, and a Dutch national who was not born in Aruba needs a residence permit to live and or work here, unless a narrow exception applies (born in Aruba, born on Curacao, Bonaire, Sint Maarten, Sint Eustatius or Saba and resident in Aruba since before 1 January 1986, or a child of someone in either group). If none of those apply to you, you are what DIMAS calls a permit-required Nederlander, and you get one-year permits, renewed annually, until you qualify for automatic admission after five uninterrupted years under article 3(f) of the LTU.

2. Significant issueSocial security

   Double social premiums are a real, uncredited risk past 183 rolling days

   With no 883/2004, no A1, no posting rule and no aggregation, an employee who becomes insured in Aruba can end up paying Aruban AOV, AWW and AZV, 5 percent plus 1.6 percent on the employee side, 10.5 percent plus 8.9 percent plus 2.65 percent on the employer side, on wages that are still running through a Dutch payroll until Dutch domestic law releases them. Exit from Dutch insurance turns on ceasing to be a Wlz-insured resident of the Netherlands, a Dutch-side test, not on anything Aruba does. There is no credit, no exemption certificate and no refund mechanism between the two systems.

3. Significant issuePersonal income tax

   Past 183 rolling days, Aruba gets the taxing right over the days you worked there

   Once your presence in Aruba exceeds 183 days within any rolling twelve-month period, BRK article 15(2) stops protecting you, and article 15(1) gives Aruba the right to tax the employment income for the days actually worked there. This is not a cliff that only applies from day 184 onward for one tax year, it is a switch that turns the ordinary source rule back on for the relevant period. Because a foreign employer with no Aruban establishment is not an inhoudingsplichtige, a withholding agent, there may be no mechanism to withhold the tax automatically, which leaves the liability on your own Aruban income tax return instead.

4. Significant issueLeaving home: exit tax and ties

   The exit tax that actually bites is Dutch, and it follows you for a decade

   Leaving the Netherlands for Aruba triggers the standard Dutch machinery regardless of what Aruba itself charges, the conserverende aanslag, a deemed-disposal tax, on substantial-interest, aanmerkelijk belang, shares and on pension or annuity claims, plus the ten-year fiction in Dutch inheritance and gift tax under which a departing Dutch national is deemed still resident for 10 years. Aruba having abolished its own inheritance tax does not help a Dutch emigrant for that first decade, these are Dutch-side rules that apply on their own terms independent of the destination.

5. Significant issuePermanent establishment risk

   Signing contracts or running the company from Aruba creates real permanent establishment risk

   Habitually concluding or negotiating contracts that bind your employer while working from Aruba is the classic trigger for a dependent-agent permanent establishment under BRK article 2(2)'s place-of-management concept. If a director or senior manager genuinely runs the company from Aruba, that adds a place-of-effective-management risk on top. Either one can pull the employer into Aruban profit tax on the share of profit attributable to that activity, and because the BRK carries no modern anti-fragmentation rule, there is no safe harbour to fall back on.

6. Significant issueEmployment law

   Dismissal needs prior permission, and firing without it is void

   Under the Landsverordening beeindiging arbeidsovereenkomsten, article 4, an Aruban employer cannot terminate an employment contract without permission from the Director of the Directie Arbeid en Onderzoek, DAO. Case law confirms employees can successfully argue a termination without an ontslagvergunning is void, GHvJ 25-04-2023, AUA2022H00233. This is a Dutch-style preventive dismissal test, not at-will employment, which surprises founders arriving from almost anywhere else.

What tends to surprise people here

• Dutch nationals born in Europe are permit-required here, the reverse of Curacao and Sint Maarten
• The old BRK 1964 still governs the Dutch tax relationship, there is no modern bilateral arrangement
• BBO, BAVP and BAZV stack to 7 percent on turnover with no input credit and no VAT reform in sight

Tax treaty between United States and Aruba