Jegan

ICT Professional from India

I arrived in The Netherlands in September 2013. I was brought here to work for one of World’s leading Electronics company. We were, at that point, fixing a mission critical problem and helped in rebuilding the company’s market share. Since that time, I extended my expertise into building banking solutions and now provide such solutions for one of the Netherlands’ leading banking firms.
 
But this is more than just my professional life. My wife (then girlfriend) and I had the agreement to move to Europe together as a couple. Everything went according to the plan. I moved to the Netherlands in 2013 and shortly thereafter we were married. My wife joined me in the Netherlands in 2015. Last year, we started a family together. Our young daughter arrived a few months ago. My wife opted to leave her job to help care for our daughter, and we found a new apartment to accommodate our growing family.
 
Why, however, am I sharing such personal facts on the Internet? How does the 30% ruling come into play?
 
Well, all of the above decisions were based on the assumption of my net income. My net income was, quite literally, the premise in which all of my family decisions were made. My salary is the only income for the three of us. Had I known that the 30% ruling was going to expire sooner, decisions would have been different. My wife may have kept her job, we may have tried to remain in our apartment longer, or we might have prolonged or altered our personal and financial commitments. Our life decisions were made with my salary in mind, and now, it looks as though I will experience a significant loss of income on 1 January 2019.  I am unsure how to proceed or how we will survive this unexpected situation. Returning to my home country is certainly a possibility, although I fear that if I return to India, I sadly won’t remember this country for the right reasons.  I won’t remember why I chose to work here, to start my family here, to integrate here – I will only remember how my family and I were treated at the end, and how our deal was broken, and how my trust in the Dutch government was effectively destroyed.
 
Please maintain your commitment to me and my family.