Finalizing the deal

Wednesday, 26 Apr 2006 | Leaving the Netherlands

In the right hand column on the homepage of sixtysix there is a section called Currently, which describes in a quick overview what the major things are that I am currently dealing with.

Only 19 weeks away from departure. Preparing to move out of my condominium to a temporary home, finalizing a deal with my employer and generally preparing the last couple of months before I leave.

The deal I’m trying to make with my employer is hopefully soon to be completed. It turned out the rules applicable to the downsizing kept me from leaving for Asia and so I started talking to my boss’s boss (we’ll call him mr. middle management) about an individual agreement. He was very accomodating and we worked out a deal we both felt was fair. I put this in writing and he is now talking to personnel about this deal. As he was formerly responsible for the legal issues of personnel, he knows what he’s talking about. And he knew about my plans even before he became my boss’s boss, he is the same guy I once referred to as mister HR. Anyway, in preparing the deal and putting it in writing, I got a helping hand from his then senior associate to whom I’m ofcourse very thankful. I’ve got the senior associate, my boss, mr. middle management and mr. senior management all in my corner on this. I shouldn’t jinx it, but I feel confident we’ll be able to finalize this deal.

The only thing I added on top of what we had already agreed would be a fair deal, is for an unpaid leave of absence of 2 months to be added before my contract ends. I ofcourse explained this to him and gave him two versions of the letter I wrote, one with and one without this leave included. As far as I’ve been able to find out, the leave of absence doesn’t really effect the company. But just in case there is a reason why it’s not possible, I left the choice up to him to either use one or the other letter when talking to the personnel department. The reason why I want this leave of absence to be added to the end of my contract is the following: at the termination date of my contract, all vacation days, holiday money, end of year bonus, etc. will be paid out in one go. With the termination date currently set for december 1st, this means I receive all this money right away. However, if I receive it in 2007, it will be the only Dutch income I have in that year and as such be in a lower tax bracket - saving me several thousand euro in the process. The downside ofcourse being that because I have an income here, I’ll be obligated to have the base health insurance here. But the money involved in that is far less than the savings.

Mr. advisor guy gave me a tip when I told him about this. He said that when I indeed would get this leave of absence worked into the deal, I could then out of that final sum have €613 euro transferred into a ‘spaarloon’¹ account which would save me an additional few hundred euro of income tax. I’m such a nerd for loving cute little things like that, but I do!