Daycare, BSO and the childcare benefit

Dutch childcare is bought by the hour from private companies, and then a large part of the bill is refunded by the tax office.

Nothing about that is obvious from outside, and the consequence is that families routinely look at a nursery’s price list, conclude they cannot afford it, and never find out what they would actually have paid.

Three numbers govern the whole system: the hourly rate your provider charges, the maximum hourly rate the allowance will match, and the percentage of that maximum you get back.

The four kinds of care

A kinderdagverblijf, or dagopvang, takes children from a few months old until they start school at four.

A gastouder is a registered childminder caring for a small group, often in their own home, and is usually the most flexible option.

Buitenschoolse opvang, always called BSO, covers children from 4 to 12 before school, after school and through the holidays.

Peuteropvang and the voorschool take two and three-year-olds for a few mornings a week and are half childcare and half early education.

Only care registered in the Landelijk Register Kinderopvang attracts the allowance.

This is not a formality.

A neighbour, an au pair or an unregistered arrangement, however good, produces nothing from the Belastingdienst.

Check the LRK number before you sign anything.

What the allowance actually pays

Kinderopvangtoeslag reimburses a percentage of the hourly cost, up to a capped rate.

For 2026 the caps are 11.23 euro an hour for day nurseries, 9.98 euro for out-of-school care and 8.49 euro for childminders.

Anything your provider charges above the cap is yours alone, and in The Hague plenty of providers do charge above it.

The percentage depends on household income.

Families with a joint income up to 56,413 euro receive 96% of the capped rate.

Above that it falls away gradually, down to 36.5% for the first child at the top of the income scale, with a higher percentage retained for second and subsequent children, which does not drop below about 68%.

You can claim for at most 230 hours per child per calendar month.

If you use fewer, you are paid for the hours in your contract, and unused hours can be carried forward within the same year.

Entitlement is tied to working: both parents must be working, studying, in a re-integration programme or doing inburgering, and the hours claimed must correspond to those activities.

An illustration, using the cap rather than a real provider’s price.

Two full days a week at a nursery is roughly 91 hours a month.

At 11.23 euro that is about 1,022 euro, of which a household under the 56,413 euro threshold gets 96% back, leaving something in the region of 40 euro.

The same two days for a household well into the higher band leaves several hundred euro a month to find.

Two families at the same nursery gate can be paying very different amounts, and that is the design working as intended.

The deadline that costs families money every year

Kinderopvangtoeslag can only be backdated three months, counted from the month in which you apply.

Every other Dutch allowance can be claimed retrospectively until 1 September of the following year.

This one cannot.

Apply in the month your child starts, before the first invoice if necessary.

You will be estimating income and hours; estimate and correct later rather than waiting for certainty.

The application runs through Mijn Toeslagen with DigiD, and the rest of the machinery is covered in the guide to the Dutch allowances, including the legal duty to report a change of circumstances within four weeks.

That duty matters more here than anywhere else, because childcare hours change constantly.

A child moving from nursery to BSO, a contract cut from three days to two, a partner changing jobs: each one changes the calculation, and each one left unreported becomes a repayment demand.

The Hague’s own schemes, which do not depend on working

Families with no entitlement to kinderopvangtoeslag, typically because one parent does not work, are not shut out.

The gemeente subsidises peuteropvang for them, with an income-dependent hourly contribution based on the VNG’s 2026 advisory table, applied to the first two sessions, around eight hours a week.

You apply through the childcare centre rather than the gemeente, and you supply a signed declaration that you have no right to kinderopvangtoeslag along with proof of income.

The Hague also went further than any other large Dutch city on early education.

Since 1 January 2024 the voorschool has been free for children between two and a half and four who have a referral from the Centrum voor Jeugd en Gezin, for sixteen hours a week.

Without a referral, children can attend eight hours a week with an income-based contribution.

In the lowest income band the VNG table puts the parental contribution for a full sixteen-hour, forty-week year at around 288 euro.

If your child will go on to a Dutch primary school, the voorschool is the single most useful preparation available, because it front-loads the Dutch that would otherwise have to be learned in a reception class.

Waiting lists

The sector is short of staff and has been for years, with roughly 6,000 open vacancies nationally and a shortfall that was already around 7,000 pedagogical staff in 2025.

Waiting times are longest in the big cities and longest of all for the youngest children, and the projections for 2026 to 2028 point to lists getting longer rather than shorter.

The practical response is to register early, meaning during pregnancy for a nursery place, and to register with more than one provider.

Registration is usually free or nearly so.

Ask specifically about babies under one, which is the scarcest category, and ask whether a sibling already at the nursery gives priority, because it usually does.

A gastouder is worth investigating as a first placement even if you want a nursery eventually.

Availability is often better, the hourly cap is lower but so are many childminders’ rates, and moving a two-year-old into a nursery is far easier than getting a newborn in.

One change on the horizon that will not help in the short term: the government’s new childcare financing system, under which care becomes cheaper for most parents, has been pushed back from 2027 to 2029.

Cheaper care means more demand, and the shortage of staff is forecast to grow with it.

BSO, and the holiday problem

Out-of-school care is a separate contract from the school itself, with a separate company, separate invoices and separate opening hours.

Dutch primary schools finish early, and in many cases at different times on different days, so BSO is not optional for two working parents.

Read the contract type carefully.

Schoolweken-only contracts cover the roughly forty weeks of term and are cheaper.

Fifty-two-week contracts include the holidays.

Dutch school holidays run to about twelve weeks a year, including a summer break of six weeks, which is a great deal more than most employees have in leave.

Getting this wrong in May and discovering it in July is a common and expensive mistake.

The school year and its holidays sets out the dates, which are fixed regionally and published years ahead, so the planning can be done properly.

Choosing a provider

Every registered location has a published GGD inspection report, which is public and specific, and is a better guide than a glossy website.

Look at group sizes, staff turnover and whether the outdoor space is genuinely usable.

Language is worth asking about directly.

Some Hague nurseries operate largely in English, some are entirely Dutch, and some are bilingual by accident because the staff and the children happen to be.

If you want your child to arrive at school with Dutch, an English-speaking nursery will not deliver it.

If you are here for two years, it may not matter at all.

Childcare and preschools in The Hague vary more on this point than on anything else.

Finally, do the sum before you decide how much to work.

The interaction between a second income, the allowance taper and the marginal tax rate is unkind in the middle of the income range, and the honest answer for some households is that the third day at work costs money.

What things actually cost in this city is the wider version of the same arithmetic.

Sources

• Dienst Toeslagen, wat verandert er in 2026 voor uw toeslagen: maximum hourly rates for 2026 of 11.23 euro for dagopvang, 9.98 euro for buitenschoolse opvang and 8.49 euro for gastouderopvang, and 96% of the maximum for joint incomes up to 56,413 euro
• Rijksoverheid, bedragen kinderopvangtoeslag 2026: the maximum of 230 hours per child per calendar month and the income-dependent percentages falling to 36.5% for the first child and remaining higher for subsequent children
• Belastingdienst, voor hoeveel opvanguren krijg ik kinderopvangtoeslag: the 230-hour cap, payment only for contracted hours where fewer are used, and unused hours carried forward within the year
• Belastingdienst, voorwaarden kinderopvangtoeslag: care must be registered in the Landelijk Register Kinderopvang, and the hours claimed must correspond to hours worked, studied, spent in re-integration or on inburgering
• Belastingdienst and Juridisch Loket: kinderopvangtoeslag backdated a maximum of three months from the month of application, against 1 September of the following year for the other allowances
• VNG, adviestabel ouderbijdrage peuteropvang 2026: the income-dependent parental contribution for the first two sessions, the standard hourly rate equal to the 2026 dagopvang maximum of 11.23 euro, and a contribution of around 288 euro a year in the lowest income band for sixteen hours a week over forty weeks
• Subsidieregeling peutervoorzieningen Den Haag and voorschooldenhaag.nl: the free voorschool for children aged two and a half to four with a CJG referral since 1 January 2024 at sixteen hours a week, eight hours with an income-based contribution without a referral, and the declaration of no entitlement to kinderopvangtoeslag required from the provider
• Brancheorganisatie Kinderopvang and Werken bij Kinderopvang: around 6,000 open vacancies, a shortfall of roughly 7,000 staff in 2025, waiting lists longest in the big cities and for the youngest children, and pressure expected to increase between 2026 and 2028
• Tweede Kamer and Salaris Vanmorgen: the new childcare financing system postponed from 2027 to 2029, with demand expected to rise as costs fall