Dutch Ryanair pilot loses court case vs tax man: not deemed self-employed
 

Sorry it's not available in English:

https://www.trouw.nl/home/rechter-zi...p-er~ab0a6652/

Bullet points:

- Judge rules in favour of Dutch Tax Authority.

- Pilot not self-employed as:

1. only one company using services of the pilot in question through only one agency
2. company holds position of authority in relation with pilot
3. pilot has to meet criteria not compatible with being self-employed
4. company decided when and where pilot was to work / fly.

- The judge ruled that the pilot was deemed to be employed by Ryanair.

- Ryanair played their usual mantra: not aware of any court case involving Ryanair, if pilots have a tax liability in The Netherlands they will be refunded their tax paid in Ireland by the Irish Revenue regardless of the question whether they are self-employed or employed by Ryanair.

- According to a Dutch professor of fiscal economics this verdict opens the door for investigation of Ryanair and the agency through which the pilot was employed by tax authorities.

As a whole this sounds like a victory for the pilot community, if this case will be precedent for future cases. If he wasn't self-employed than someone else was. That entity must have been responsible for paying the social security, as that is most often an employer's responsibility (with some countries having an employee share).

RYR and Norwegian's crewing policies are just criminal. Temporary contracting for a probation period or for peak season is fine. But the pilot worked 6 years as contractor for only 1 client! I don't feel sorry for him the court ruled he has to pay back taxes. He should've left RYR as soon as he could. The only way this will change is when RYR can't crew the airplanes.

In respect of Norwegian there are no self employed pilots all pay tax & social insurance deducted by their local employer be it OSM ( short haul) Rishworth ( Long haul )

So no issues for pilots flying for Norwegian, TBF Norwegian saw this coming down the line 3 years back and ditched Conair & Arpi in favour of OSM so all should be clean

Inkjet, I am not saying Norwegian pilots aren't paying their taxes. I am saying that working as a contractor for many years for one company without having the chance to obtain a direct employment is repulsive.

So what?
How many aircraft does Ryanair base in the Netherlands, 2?
What you need is a court case in Ireland, England, Germany where the bulk of Ryanair pilots live and work.
Dutch tax rules apply in the tiny flat Dutch countryside only, what precedence are we talking about?

I'm not saying this is not a nice victory for 'the pilots vs. Ryanair', but as far as precedence goes this seems very....local. And a bummer for the individual pilot of course.

Oddly this was FRONT page news in the NL. Why on earth?

Following the recent Pimlico Plumbers ruling https://www.theguardian.com/business...g-economy-case this "self employed" scam is coming unravelled at last. It won't take much for other EU courts to follow this ruling - indeed it would be hard for them not to.
Maybe, a decade too late, this iniquitous fiddle is coming to an end.

Yeah welcome to Italy, where money talks and takes care of everything. Coincidence that Ryanair announced massive expansion in Italy combined to this court ruling? I trust the Dutch court system more than the Italian to be fair. And then I don't even mention the time it takes to handle a case......

Loads of Ryanair pilots better brace themselves, the Germans and British will soon follow. Justice is finally served.

There will be no fine to pay as this case was not brought to court after an investigation by the Dutch tax authorities, but by an assessment of the tax return the pilot in question had filed himself. It is a dispute over his status as self-employed / employee rather than a criminal case over tax-evasion. He will simply have to pay tax as an employee in stead of a self-employed individual.

The more interesting consequence is what the Dutch government will do next. If Ryanair is deemed to be the employer of pilots based in The Netherlands, then Ryanair is liable for the employer part of social security premiums and labour taxes applicable in The Netherlands. Not a huge number of pilots indeed, but if Ryanair has to pay these employer premiums and taxes for all their crew based at EIN it amounts to a nice sum of money and automatically puts all this crew in the Dutch social security system as employees (and entitled to all applicable benefits, such as sick pay etc.).

That is a precedent if it happens, and in previous cases like Marseille Ryanair pulled their crew out of France quicker than you can say: 'bogus self-employment'.

Kim jong Il

All Norwegian short haul pilots are employed by OSM which in turn is part owned by Norwegian air resources, the pilots are not on fixed term contracts, but are permanently employed by OSM. So they are not by definition contractors denied employment, having said that most would prefer the comfort blanket of being employed by Norwegian directly, I suspect that sooner or later a country or union will bring a case to show that the true employer is Norwegian because in reality OSM provide HR services and not much else, even payroll is outsourced which is no bad thing.

"Permanently" employed OSM agency pilots are temporarily rented to a Norwegian airline. The Norwegian airline may return the pilot(s) to OSM without notice, reason or recourse. The notice period is with the employer OSM, not the Norwegian airline. A job security fear culture is created.

The REAL employer is the key factor.

EU law defines “the employer” as the entity controlling the working life, days off, vacation and providing the materials and equipment to do the job. Two publications atypically employed pilots, and those purportedly representing their best interests, should read:

http://www.ilo.org/wcmsp5/groups/pub...cms_209280.pdf

https://www.eurocockpit.be/sites/def..._15_0212_f.pdf

There are collective bargaining issues for pilots flying for Ryanair and Norwegian (pilots at Norwegian are represented to service provider agency OSM, not to the airline). The remedy exists for both groups to significantly improve their lot. The first step is to establish a court ruling the AIRLINE is the employer. Legal rulings in Scandinavia and the USA have recently determined the Norwegian airline to be the employer.

The days may indeed be finally numbered for limited companies and service provider agencies, employing and renting pilots to airlines from PO Boxes and broom cupboard offices, and for those airlines taking advantage of such employment circumvention, shell game schemes.

I find it incredulous that either a large corporation (RYR) or a supposedly intelligent individual could genuinely believe that stating 'self-employed' was legitimate. My wife is registered as a ZZP (self-employed) in the Dutch system, as a freelance dance instructor, and it is abundantly clear when filling in the tax returns (and looking at the guidelines for eligibility) that working full time for a single 'client' does not qualify!

Very interesting...

Now with storm and the accountants your forced to use you have to pay soc security tax as employers and employees so in theory countries will get their tax take regardless.

If fr were forced to make everyone employed, i can only envisage how bad those t+c will be....and they would get away with it as they always do...

When will European authorities put an end to this ... practises ?

I am surprised that some of the legacies dont take this up and try and take ryan to court.

Think about it. Goverments are not allowed to fund airlines, been illegal in eu for years.

Ryan hire 1000 new co-jos a year. They are instructed to claim all their training costs (tr, uniform,hotels) back via these fake shadow companies, and most co-jos dont pay tax for 3 years. So by claiming off their tax bill ryan have pushed a huge chunk of their costs on to local governments! Legacy airlines cannot compete with this unfair playing field

Never understood why the Revenue in the UK doesn't chase RyanAir - it's a clear breach of IR35 and all sorts of other legistlation...............

Maybe not that clean then?

I think that is effectively what happened in the Marseille case that Longhitter mentioned, as I recall it from the French Press somebody locally ( either AF, one of the AF syndicats, or even the local "council" started the ball rolling).

You are probably aware, but to highlight for other followers of this thread. It's a EU directive which mandates that for aircrew you should be socially insured in the country where you are based. It hasn't really got anything to do with which accountant you use.


Unless things have changed with these Ltd. co set-up Ireland gets the vast majority of pilot's income tax. The social security is a tax that's levied on the employer (plus in some countries, a employee share). You could say that if you live and work in a continental Ryanair base, that country should receive income tax + social security, not either or.



I think that's a fallacy. The T+C are that bad already. They fool new-joiners by saying you earn €75 psbh. What they don't tell you is that what your Company earns is supposed to cover the social security payments + a salary (to you, on which income tax will be deducted).

I was told that even FR pilots employed directly are on time limited contract which finish age 60 after which you might invited back as a contractor, that has got to be age discrimination if there were truly employed, can anyone confirm whether this is true?