As you might know, I like to understand how things work. This applies very much to physical, technical things, but also to laws and regulations, and then in particular my income tax. After the year ends, the Belastingdienst software can calculate your taxes for you, but I would like to be able to understand and predict that calculation. Especially since I started as a self-employed contractor, it made sense to know the impact of some choices (and to predict my taxes so I am not surprised by a big bill).

For this, I created a spreadsheet to do this calculation. I've been updating the spreadsheet every year with the latest regulations and tariffs and it has worked for me pretty well. I have long intended to share this work, but never got around to it until a former colleague showed interest in the spreadsheet, which was a good reason to finally clean it up and put it online.

The spreadsheet can:

• Calculate income tax (Inkomstenbelasting, that anyone needs to pay) and ZVW (Inkomens-afhankelijke bijdrage Zorgverzekeringswet, paid by self-employed people directly, for employees their employer handles this).
• Calculate how much Zorgtoeslag you are entitled to, if any.
• Calculate your pension allowance (Jaarruimte & Reserveringsruimte).
• Take into account Hypotheekrenteaftrek, Investeringsaftrek and aftrekbeperkingen.

In general, the yellow-colored cells can be filled with personal info, the grey-colored cells contain year-specific numbers.

Some caveats:

• The spreadsheet is for Dutch taxes and written in Dutch (I considered writing this blogpost in Dutch as well, but that would be the first, so I stuck to English here).
• The spreadsheet works well if you are just employed or just self-employed. When combining both, there might be some details that will be different.
• I have used the spreadsheet with a partner, but it should also work fine if you report your taxes alone (I think only the Zorgtoeslag part is incorrect).
• Everything assumes you have not reached the AOW-leeftijd yet. If you have, a ton of things change.
• The spreadsheet goes back all the way to 2010, but the earlier years are less extensive and less nice.
• I have verified the calculations are correct by comparing with my own income tax report, but for the most recent year where I did not report yet, and for parts of the spreadsheet that do not apply to my situation, there might still be errors.
• No warranty or guarantees of any kind. This is just a tool for me that might save others time, but be sure to check everything against your situation.

I usually update the spreadsheet in the first half of the year with the new numbers for that running year. I will try to publish the updated spreadsheet here when I do, but if you are looking for a more recent version that is available, feel free to drop me an e-mail to ask (I might just have forgotten to put the new version online). Also, if this spreadsheet is useful to you, I would appreciate a shout out in the comments, via mail or on Mastodon.

The current spreadsheet is updated until 2026 (checked against the report program until 2025) and can be downloaded here:

>> Download Spreadsheet (ods) <<

As everybody in Holland knows, the Dutch train service has been "huilen met de pet op" lately. Due to all the snow and frozen junctions, we've seen a few days with next to no train service a while back, and even now when all the snow is gone, there is still an "adapted schedule", due to "logistic problems". In other words, they don't have enough (working) trains to serve all of the schedule, so some routes have reduced service.

On the plus side, because of this the Dutch Railways is giving every subscription holder (which includes also includes the "Voordeelurenkaart" and the "OV Studentenkaart") free coffee, tea or hot chocolate at the Kiosks. This is at least the case in Utrecht, probably in more places. However, even though the announcement there said ns.nl would contain more details about the offer, I can't find it, so I can't tell for sure.

So, if you've got a few minutes to spare on a station this week, get your free drink at the Kiosk!

And, on a related note: The NS is refunding tickets from the dreaded december 20th, 21st and 22nd railway mayhem, so if you had a delay then (or didn't arrive at all) and still have the ticket, go claim a refund!

Right now, it's totally crazy weather outside. It's no longer raining, it is more like a solid block of water floating around. With multiple lightning flashes every second and a river of water flowing through our street, it's kind of hellish weather. Anyway, I have pictures and a few movies of it (they are a bit fuzzy because of the darkness, unfortunately, I didn't manage to use the lightning as a flash for the pictures :-)

Update: Tipped off by Brenda (Who is in the train to Amsterdam now, I took some pictures of the Enschede Drienerlo train station. Last night, after the rain, a flatmate reported that the water was knee-high in the tunnel under the station. During the night, physics has again proven its worth: Water always flows to the lowest point.

For those who don't know the station, there used to be a tunnel underneat (you can still see a few centimeters of it) that is about four meters high. Yeah, that's a lot of water indeed. Anyway, more pictures (scroll down).

Just a few pictures I made last week during the snow. And yes, those people are really going to do langlaufing on campus...

Since the NS (Dutch Railways) have their problems and regularly cause train travelers a lot of frustration, almost everybody has a negative attitude towards the NS and, as the public face of the company, the conductors. Even though I cannot deny the frustrations caused by train delays and other railway problems ("Leafs on the tracks"), I think this negative attitude can be a very undue punishment for the NS personnel.

Even though I don't like some of the NS policies and I still do not see the new schedule being much of an improvement, I notice that most conductors and other personnel try to be as helpful as possible when a problem occurs. Even when the cause of the problem is not even related to themselves or the NS (as is the case when it's usually my own fault :-p).

For example, last week I misplanned by a few minutes, meaning I had no time remaining to buy myself a ticket from Harderwijk to Enschede. Buying a ticket at the conductor is no longer possible without paying a EUR 35 fine first, but I had a dateless ticket from Enschede to Ermelo to bargain with. He allowed me to use that ticket to travel the wrong way, at least until Zwolle. There I would need to convince the next conductor of my pitiful case.

I expected a though bargain with the next conductor, since there was no way for him to test my story. For all he knows, I could be trying to turn a Enschede - Ermelo ticket into a Enschede-Zwolle return ticket with my story. Having bought another dateless ticket as a backup option I was rather surprised when I explained my story. "Sure. Hop in!", were the magic words.

Another example occurred about a year or so back. I was traveling during the weekend, but (as happens to me more often than I'd like) I forgot my public transportation student card only works on weekdays. So, halfway Eindhoven - Utrecht I had no ticket to present to the conductor. Instead of making me buy a ticket in the train (this was before the EUR 35 fine, but a ticket would still be a lot more expensive than normal), she allowed me to buy a normal ticket from Utrecht on to Ermelo instead. Very thoughtful of my wallet indeed.

As you might expect, I totally forgot about that when we arrived in Utrecht. So, just past Amersfoort I managed to end up in the same situation again, with a conductor but without a ticket. Even though I admitted I half-truthfully said I came from Utrecht (from Eindhoven would be fully truthful, from Amersfoort would be cheapest), he allowed me to buy a ticket from Amersfoort instead of Utrecht. Even though this was against train-tariff, the price was about a third of what my original Eindhoven - Ermelo ticket would have cost.

I thought about proposing a Be-Nice-To-Your-Conductor-Day or something similarly silly, but apart from that it probably already exists, it wouldn't be too useful anyway. It's probably a better idea to be a little friendlier to our helpful conductors and try to see them separate from the company they work for. And, looking at the time of the year, perhaps this is suitable for inclusion on your list of good intentions?

I've just been in the train for a few hours, from Ermelo to Enschede. While waiting on the train (delay: 25 minutes), I noticed it being quite cold. Still 3 days away from official winter, it's already below zero in the Eastern part of the Netherlands. The frozen catenary above the trains did result in some nice fireworks of sparks and smoke, but unfortunately I forgot to make pictures...

I did make a nice picture when I got out of the train.

The standard Nokia SMS tune (beep-beep-beep, beep-beep, beep-beep-beep) is actually "SMS" spelled in Morse?

Watching a commercial for some kind of skin cream called "SOS skin repair" or something, made me realize this yesterday (in between watching Beauty & the Nerd.

Did you know that the sound of a nearly empty tube of toothpaste is almost identical to the sound of a paintbal gun, only less loud?