The situation
The contracts and working arrangements of freelance developers
A Dutch SaaS company works with 14 freelance developers: five in Amsterdam on rolling contracts, and nine in Wrocław on B2B contracts through their own sole-trader businesses. Most have worked only for the company for two years or more, use its laptops and join the daily stand-up. Due diligence for a funding round has flagged them.
The CFO needs a memo for the investors: how large the risk is in each country, what decides it, and what to change. The statutes give a short definition. The answer is in the court decisions, and in how each developer actually works, which is not always what the contract says.
What the research has to settle
The rules behind the answer
- Labels do not decide
- In both countries, whether a relationship is employment depends on how the work is actually performed, not on the name of the contract. A B2B or freelance contract does not stop a court from finding an employment relationship.
- The Dutch test after Deliveroo
- In its 2023 Deliveroo judgment, the Hoge Raad held that the assessment weighs all the circumstances, including the nature and duration of the work, how work and hours are set, embedding in the organisation and whether the worker acts as an entrepreneur. Dutch enforcement on deemed employment has also resumed.
- The Polish test: work under direction
- Polish labour law treats work performed under the employer’s direction, at a place and time it sets, for remuneration, as employment whatever the contract is called. The social-security and tax consequences follow from that.
- The exposure is more than labour law
- Reclassification can bring back payments of wage tax and social contributions, employment rights such as paid holiday and notice, and, in Poland, an assessment by the social insurance institution. The memo should take each line in turn.
How it runs in azta
From the question to the document
The question, as you would type it
Dutch BV works with freelance developers: five in the Netherlands on rolling contracts and nine in Poland on B2B contracts. Most have worked only for us for over two years, use our equipment and attend daily stand-ups. What is the misclassification risk in each country, and which court decisions decide it?
You start with
The contracts and working arrangements of freelance developers
- 01
Describe how each group works
Give the contracts, the hours, the tools, the reporting lines and other clients. azta searches Dutch and Polish labour, tax and social-security law.
Cited research· Free - 02
Find the decisions
Ask for Dutch and Polish decisions on IT contractors and similar facts. azta searches the published case law it holds and summarises each decision with a link.
Case-law search - 03
Draft the risk memo
Ask for a memo per country with the test, the facts that weigh each way, a risk rating per group and recommendations. Edit it in Canvas.
Canvas · Ask azta· Pro - 04
Export for the data room
Export the memo to Word for the investors’ advisors, with the decisions listed in an annex.
Word export· Pro You send
A risk memo per country, with the court decisions that decide the test
What you get
A risk memo per country, with the court decisions that decide the test
Risk memo · draft
Freelance developers: employment status risk
Netherlands. Weighed against the factors in the Deliveroo judgment, the five Amsterdam developers show strong signs of employment: long duration, work built into the core product, hours set by the team and no other clients. We rate the risk of reclassification high for three of them.
Poland. For the nine Wrocław developers, the decisive question is whether they work under the company’s direction. Daily stand-ups and set hours point toward employment; freedom to send a substitute and other clients point away. The decisions in Annex B show how courts weighed similar facts.
Recommendations. Offer employment to the developers whose work cannot be told apart from staff. For the rest, bring practice in line with the contracts: deliverables instead of hours, no line management, and freedom to work for others.
Outcomes on your numbers
What azta is worth on this task
Pro pays for itself after
12 minutes a month
At €140 an hour, that is all the time Pro (€27 a month) has to take off your desk to cover its price.
Example figures. Replace them with your own.
- Hours back a year
- 32
- Capacity at your rate
- €4,536
- More contractor risk memos a quarter
- 0.8
- Return on Pro
- 14×
- Research
- Drafting
- Your review
A scenario you set, not a promise. The hours that come back go to another client, or deeper into this one.
Want these numbers on your team’s real workload?
Book a demoSources azta searches here
- Rechtspraak.nl
- wetten.overheid.nl
- SAOS
- Dziennik Ustaw
What stays with you
- The facts of how each developer actually works.
- The decision to reclassify or restructure.
- Quantifying back payments with payroll advisors.
Frequently asked questions
- Does azta search Dutch and Polish court decisions?
- Yes. Rechtspraak.nl and SAOS are in the source register, and azta searches them in the original language and answers in yours.
- Can it assess each developer?
- Upload the contract and a description of how each person works, and ask. azta sets out the factors with citations; the judgement on each relationship stays with you.
- Does it cover other countries?
- Yes. azta researches employment-status questions across Europe. Name the country in the question.
