Disability care and false self-employment: not a pity party — decades of the wrong hiring model

Triggered by reporting on Nationale Zorggids (30 July 2026) about disability-care annual reports and fear of fines under the Dutch DBA rules on false self-employment (schijnzelfstandigheid), citing BDO research and Skipr coverage.

More than half of disability-care annual reports allegedly carry a warning note about the Wet DBA. Providers fear back-taxes, multi-year pension contributions and fines if contractors are reclassified as employees. The story is framed as a sector that is “afraid”, “at risk”, almost a victim of enforcement.

On ZZP2ZZP we read that differently.

What those disclosures actually admit

When a care provider must disclose that the freelancers it hires might be treated as employees, that is not bad luck from the tax office. It is a quiet confession: the engagement looks like employment — authority, organisational embedding, the same structural work as payroll staff. That is the core of false self-employment.

DBA-style rules were not invented to harass entrepreneurs. They exist because wage labour was massively rebadged as invoices: lower burdens for the client, weaker protection on the floor. Enforcement with teeth is the delayed bill for that history, not a random raid on care.

The pity frame protects the wrong side

The tone is familiar: care is vulnerable, clients are vulnerable, so the sector should be spared when sham constructions meet the law. That is a pity party. It distracts from the real questions:

• who chose cheap flexible hire for decades instead of decent terms and enough permanent posts?
• who stretched “freelancer” into a roster tool?
• who enjoyed the savings — and who pays when the model collapses?

Sympathy for the institution that fears fines is sympathy for the buyer of the model. Serious freelancers — own acquisition, real business risk, multiple clients, visible independence — are the ones damaged when “zzp in care” becomes a synonym for disguised employment. Every sector that hollows out the freelancer label makes life harder for people who actually run a business.

Low pay + structural freelancers is a choice

Disability care faces scarcity, hard work and public pressure. That is real. It does not justify a model where permanent teams are too thin or too poorly paid and gaps are filled with “self-employed” people who function as staff without staff rights. That is not innovation. It is labour-law arbitrage.

If you underpay or under-staff the payroll line and paper over the gap with false freelancers, you do not get to act shocked when enforcement is expensive. Fines and assessments are deferred cost of avoiding a proper wage bill.

What real freelancing looks like

ZZP2ZZP sides with entrepreneurs who run projects, sell specialised skill, negotiate scope and price, and can walk away. Care can use that — clear assignments, expertise, boundaries. What does not fit: structural shifts on the roster, fixed hierarchy, and an annual report that already half-admits the tax authority might say “employee”.

Want less fear of DBA? Not a media tour about fines. Instead:

1. honest headcount and pay for work that is employment;
2. freelancers only where the assignment is real, not a flexible payroll;
3. stop casting enforcement as an attack on care while clients and real entrepreneurs absorb the mess.

Bottom line

Mass DBA risk notes in disability-care reports are not proof the law is too harsh. They are a smell test: too much hire looks like employment. The soft tone — sector under pressure, scared of fines — hides a harder truth: years of abusing freelancer rules to suppress labour cost broke trust for serious entrepreneurs and built a bill that is now coming due.

Enforcement is not a pity party. Cleanup is not either. If you want to keep working with real freelancers, stop treating them as cheap staff without a collective agreement.

Facts about the reports and BDO/DBA risk follow public coverage; the interpretation is ZZP2ZZP’s.