What counts as salary for a work visa, and what does not

Every country with a salary-based work visa publishes a number. Almost none of them mean the number in your offer letter. The gap between the two is where applications fail, and it is rarely explained on the page that shows the threshold.

The Netherlands leaves holiday allowance out

Dutch employers pay 8% holiday allowance on top of the monthly salary. For the highly skilled migrant permit, the IND does not count it. The threshold is measured against sv-loon — the gross wage on which payroll tax and national insurance are calculated — and payments in kind, overtime, tips and payments from funds are excluded too.

In practice: the 2026 threshold for applicants aged 30 and over is €5,942 gross a month. An offer of €5,900 a month plus 8% holiday allowance pays out more than €6,300, and still fails, because only the €5,900 is counted.

Germany does not publish a figure at all

German law fixes the Blue Card threshold as a share of the annual contribution assessment ceiling for the state pension: 50% in the general case, 45.3% for shortage occupations and for anyone who graduated in the last three years. The ceiling for 2026 is €101,400, which puts the thresholds at €50,700 and €45,934.20 a year.

This matters for a practical reason. The ceiling is revised every year, so both thresholds move every year, and any page that quotes them as fixed numbers will be wrong within twelve months.

Ireland uses annual remuneration, with a graduate discount

The Critical Skills Employment Permit asks for €40,904 a year for occupations on the Critical Skills Occupations List, or €36,848 if you obtained the qualification within the twelve months before applying. A separate and much higher threshold of €68,911 applies to eligible occupations outside that list. The job offer itself has to run for at least two years.

In the UK the threshold can be beside the point

The UK publishes £41,700 a year as the general Skilled Worker requirement, with £33,400 in limited circumstances. But the rule is that you must be paid whichever is higher: that threshold, or the going rate for your specific occupation code.

So an offer of £45,000 clears the headline number and can still be refused, because the going rate for that occupation is above it. Checking the threshold alone tells you almost nothing.

What to do with your own offer

• Find out which definition applies before comparing anything: gross monthly, gross annual, or a payroll-tax base like sv-loon.
• Strip out everything the authority excludes — holiday allowance, bonuses, overtime, benefits in kind.
• Check whether a second test exists on top of the threshold, as it does in the UK.
• Check the year. Thresholds in all four countries are revised annually, usually in January.

Every figure above is taken from the authority that decides the case, and each of our country pages links straight to it with the date we last checked.