WIA: objecting to the assessment of your incapacity for work

Written by Ömür Arslan, social security lawyer at Arslan Advocaten. Registered in the specialisation register of the Netherlands Bar for tenancy law and social security law. Last updated: 1 September 2026.

How does a WIA assessment actually work?

After 104 weeks of sickness, the UWV assesses — on the basis of an insurance-medical examination and a labour-expert examination — what you could still earn per hour with your remaining capacities, and that amount is set against what you earned per hour before your illness; the difference is your incapacity percentage. That is the whole assessment in one sentence, and it is at once the reason why so many people do not recognise themselves in it: it is not about whether you are ill, nor about whether you can still do your own job.

The waiting period is laid down in article 23(1) of the WIA Act (Wet WIA): "Before the insured person can claim a benefit under this Act, a waiting period of 104 weeks applies to him." Those 104 weeks are built up from periods of incapacity that follow each other with an interruption of less than four weeks (article 23(3) of the WIA Act). Someone who has been ill for six months, worked for three weeks and then drops out again therefore still counts that first period. This can mean that the end of your waiting period comes earlier than you thought.

That the assessment rests on two examinations is laid down in article 6(1) of the WIA Act and repeated in article 2(1) of the Incapacity for Work Assessment Decree (Schattingsbesluit arbeidsongeschiktheidswetten). First an insurance physician establishes what you can still do; then a labour expert looks for jobs that match and calculates what you would earn with them.

Two provisions in article 6 explain most of the incomprehension afterwards:

• Article 6(2) of the WIA Act: when determining incapacity for work, "it is disregarded whether the insured person can actually obtain the work". Whether there really is an employer who will hire you is therefore not part of the assessment. It is about theoretical earning capacity.
• Article 6(3) of the WIA Act: work means "all generally accepted work that the insured person is capable of performing with his strengths and abilities". Not your profession, not your level of education, not your salary level: all generally accepted work.

That is why someone who can never practise their own trade again can still end up below 35%. Not because the UWV thinks they have recovered, but because other work exists in which, according to the calculation, they could still earn enough.

You apply yourself, and on time. Under article 64(2) of the WIA Act the UWV notifies you in writing, no later than the day on which the waiting period has lasted 89 weeks, of the possibility of submitting an application. Under paragraph 3 you submit that application "no later than eleven weeks before the end of the waiting period". If the notification is not sent, paragraph 6 provides a safety net: your application is deemed to have been submitted on time, or you are given four weeks after a later notification. Do not rely on it — applying late can affect the start date of your benefit, and that is a loss that can rarely be repaired afterwards.

Source: the Work and Income (Capacity for Work) Act (Wet WIA) and the Incapacity for Work Assessment Decree, consulted via wetten.overheid.nl.

When do I get a WIA benefit and when not?

In principle you only get a WIA benefit if, due to sickness or infirmity, you can earn no more than 65% of your pre-disability earnings (maatmaninkomen) per hour; if you come in above that limit, you are less than 35% incapacitated and there is no entitlement to a benefit. That threshold is the hardest in all of social security law, and there is no sliding scale: 34% yields nothing, 35% yields a benefit.

The concepts come straight from the Act:

Note the wording "per hour". The comparison is made on an hourly basis, not a monthly basis. Someone who worked forty hours before their illness and can now manage twenty is not automatically 50% incapacitated: if the hourly wage in the selected jobs equals their pre-disability earnings per hour, the percentage can come out at zero. Only if a medical restriction on working hours has also been established does the loss of hours count in the calculation.

What changes above 80%. Someone who can still earn no more than 20% of their pre-disability earnings per hour is fully incapacitated. If that is also permanent, an IVA benefit follows; if it is not, a WGA benefit based on the 80–100% class. That distinction — full versus full and permanent — is the second major point of dispute in WIA cases.

What is the difference between IVA and WGA?

The IVA is the benefit for those who are fully and permanently incapacitated and amounts to 75% of the monthly wage; the WGA is the benefit for those who are partially fit for work, or fully but not permanently incapacitated, and it is built up in phases whose level depends partly on whether you work. The difference in disposable income between the two is large in the long term, and the IVA also imposes no obligations to reintegrate.

The amount of the IVA is set out in one sentence in article 51 of the WIA Act: "The incapacity benefit amounts to 75% of the monthly wage per calendar month."

Why this distinction so often goes wrong. The UWV may consider an insured person fully incapacitated and at the same time find that improvement is not excluded. A WGA benefit of 80–100% then follows, and in the first year that hardly feels any different. The difference only reveals itself later: the WGA brings reassessments, obligations and — if you do not meet the income requirement — at some point a follow-up benefit at minimum wage level. Anyone who believes their situation is permanent should therefore not wait for that moment but object to the permanence assessment straight away.

By way of illustration. An employee with a progressive condition is deemed fully incapacitated after two years of sickness. He receives a WGA benefit in the 80–100% class and thinks he has thereby been "declared unfit". The reasoning contains one sentence about permanence: a treatment is said to be still available from which improvement is expected. His treating specialist, however, had already described that in his case this treatment is not aimed at restoring work capacity. What matters legally is not whether he is fully incapacitated — that is established — but whether the estimate of his chances of recovery is properly substantiated. That is precisely the point that can no longer be fixed retroactively five years from now. This is an example situation illustrating the rule, not a case of our firm.

What does "permanent" mean for the IVA?

According to the Act, permanent means a medically stable or deteriorating situation, and in addition a medical situation in which there is a small chance of recovery in the long term — so it is about a prognosis, not about how serious your symptoms are today. This is laid down in article 4(2) and (3) of the WIA Act, and that distinction between severity and prognosis is where almost every IVA dispute gets stuck.

The Centrale Raad van Beroep (Central Appeals Tribunal) applies that framework in full. In ECLI:NL:CRVB:2022:892 the Tribunal summarised it: under the second paragraph, permanent means a medically stable or deteriorating situation, and under the third paragraph it also includes a medical situation in which there is a small chance of recovery in the long term; the question in that case was then whether the person concerned had no usable capacities on the relevant date, so that under article 47 of the WIA Act there was entitlement to an IVA benefit instead of a WGA benefit.

The insurance physician must form his own judgment on this. In ECLI:NL:RBZWB:2022:4172 the district court held, referring to the settled case law of the Central Appeals Tribunal, that the insurance physician must form a judgment on the permanence of the incapacity within the meaning of article 4 of the WIA Act, for which he must estimate the chances of recovery in the sense of an improvement in functional capacities; it concerns an estimate of the future development of the work restrictions.

The UWV uses an internal assessment framework for this. In ECLI:NL:RBMNE:2025:6809 the district court described that framework as follows: there is permanent incapacity if improvement of work capacity is ruled out or is not, or hardly, to be expected.

Where it goes wrong. The reasoning "a treatment is still ongoing, so improvement is not excluded" is insufficient in itself. In ECLI:NL:CRVB:2018:3666 precisely that was at issue: the mere fact that someone has a very limited work capacity does not in itself mean that there is no chance of recovery — but conversely, the physician must make clear why a specific treatment would in this case lead to an improvement in the capacity for work. A reference to a therapy without substantiation of why it increases work capacity is a defect in the reasoning.

And in ECLI:NL:CRVB:2011:BP3493 the Tribunal held that information that only becomes known on appeal or further appeal may be taken into account in the assessment insofar as it relates to the relevant date; the fact that the insurance physician did not yet know that information at the time does not stand in the way. That is of great practical importance: the later course of your illness can be used to show that the prognosis at the time was untenable.

What you actually put forward in an IVA argument:

• a letter from the treating specialist about the prognosis, not about the diagnosis;
• whether treatment is aimed at restoring work capacity, or solely at relieving symptoms or stabilisation;
• whether treatment options have been exhausted, stopped or are no longer medically indicated;
• the course over the years: has there been improvement in the period before the assessment, or not;
• whether it concerns a condition that is progressive by nature.

I have been declared less than 35% incapacitated: what now?

Below 35% there is no entitlement to a WIA benefit, and that remains so even if, with your restrictions, you cannot in fact find work — but that does not close the road to a benefit: the percentage itself can be challenged, and there are defined schemes for getting in after all. This outcome is the most common in the WIA and at the same time the most contested.

The harshness lies in the calculation. Above the 35% limit, every euro of earning capacity the labour expert attributes to you counts in full, and around that limit the outcome is very sensitive to small corrections: one job that turns out to be unsuitable after all, one hour’s difference in the restriction on working hours, or pre-disability wages that were set too low can lift the percentage over the limit. That is precisely why objections around this limit pay off: they often concern a few percentage points that rest on one identifiable point.

What does remain possible:

That five-year period from articles 48 and 55 of the WIA Act is underexposed and valuable. Anyone who stays below 35% and deteriorates further in the following years due to the same condition can still enter the WIA — provided the link with the original absence is plausible. So keep having your symptoms recorded medically during that period, even if there is nothing to gain at that moment. Without building a file, the increase cannot be proven four years later.

By way of illustration. An employee drops out with chronic pain and after two years is assessed at 33% incapacity. She decides not to object, because she "cannot win against the UWV anyway". Two years later things are clearly worse and she reports again. What matters legally then is whether the deterioration stems from the same cause as the one for which she originally dropped out — for the same cause a period of five years applies, for a different cause only four weeks. So the question to be answered is not only how ill she is now, but whether there is a medical file covering the intervening years that shows the link. This is an example situation illustrating the rule, not a case of our firm.

How is my incapacity percentage calculated?

The percentage is the difference between your pre-disability earnings per hour and what, according to the designated jobs, you can still earn per hour, expressed as a percentage of the pre-disability earnings — and the wage used for this is that of the middle of the three jobs. That last point is the provision most people do not know and the one that can best be checked.

The pre-disability earnings are defined in article 1 of the WIA Act as "what healthy persons with similar education and experience usually earn through work at the place where he performs or last performed work, or in its vicinity". In practice your own wage before you dropped out is taken for this, converted to an amount per hour. Article 7 of the Assessment Decree determines which concept of wages applies.

The calculation side is set out in article 10(1) of the Assessment Decree: the calculation of what you can earn through work is based on the number of hours of the work taken into account, "unless the person concerned has capacity for a smaller number of hours, in which case that number is used", and "the wage of the middle one of the jobs referred to in article 9, part a" is taken into account.

What to check the pre-disability earnings for:

That the pre-disability earnings are a real point of dispute and not a formality is shown by ECLI:NL:CRVB:2026:745: there the case turned on the question of which number of hours could be used as the basis for the pre-disability earnings of a self-employed driver, where the labour expert had relied on the Working Hours (Transport) Decree and the pre-disability earnings had been calculated by dividing the average profit over the three financial years before the year of dropping out by a factor of hours times weeks. A difference in the assumed number of hours feeds directly into the percentage in such a calculation.

What you can do yourself: always request the labour expert’s report and the job descriptions. They show which pre-disability earnings per hour were used, which three jobs were selected, which hourly wage is linked to each of them and which job was used as the middle one. Without those documents the calculation cannot be checked, and a calculation you cannot check, you cannot refute either.

What does the insurance physician do, and what is the functional capacity list?

The insurance physician establishes which restrictions you experience in work and to what extent you have work capacity, and records this in a functional capacity list — a standardised form with headings that the labour expert then uses as a hard precondition. That list, known in practice as the FML (functionele mogelijkhedenlijst), is the hinge of your entire file: anything that is not in it does not exist further on in the procedure.

What the examination must do is laid down in article 3 of the Assessment Decree. It serves to establish whether, as a result of sickness, infirmity, pregnancy or childbirth, you are unfit for work (paragraph 1). The insurance physician examines whether there is a reduction or loss of physical or mental structure or function that results in a reduction or loss of normal behaviour and activities and of normal social role fulfilment (paragraph 2). He then establishes which restrictions you experience in functioning in work and to what extent you have capacity for work (paragraph 3). In an IVA assessment he also establishes under paragraph 4 whether those consequences are permanent.

Article 4 of the Assessment Decree sets quality requirements for this that you can literally use as a touchstone:

• the examination methods used, the reasoning, the findings and the conclusions are recorded in writing;
• an examination carried out by another insurance physician would be able to lead to the same findings and conclusions (reproducibility);
• the reasoning and conclusions are free of internal contradiction.

That third requirement is the most fruitful in practice. A report in which the physician notes in the medical history that you have to lie down after an hour of activity, while the FML includes no restriction at all on sustained work capacity, is internally contradictory — and that is a legal argument, not a medical one.

The restriction on working hours. This is the element with the greatest financial impact, because it feeds directly into the calculation under article 10 of the Assessment Decree. The UWV tests this against its own standard on sustained work capacity. In ECLI:NL:CRVB:2016:2460 a medical restriction on working hours to four hours a day, twenty hours a week was accepted "because of energy-related restrictions arising from the clinical picture and, in addition, from a preventive point of view, in view of the medical history and intensive treatment". In ECLI:NL:RBMNE:2025:163 the district court considered that, although the standard notes that a restriction on working hours can be counter-productive to rehabilitation, where there is deconditioning as a result of illness or treatment there is certainly room for a modest restriction on working hours, and that exhaustion can arise from excessive energy use.

In principle there are therefore three grounds for a restriction on working hours: an energy-related one, a preventive one and one that follows from availability for work (for example because of the time treatment takes up). If no restriction on working hours is accepted even though you pressed for one, ask for reasons along those three lines.

What to do in practice before the consultation:

1. Write down your symptoms per part of the day, with concrete examples of what you have stopped doing — not with adjectives, but with activities and durations.
2. Bring recent letters from your practitioners, or send them in advance with a covering letter indicating which point in the FML they relate to.
3. Do not play things down. "I’m managing" ends up in the report and has effects for years.
4. Afterwards, request the report and the FML and read them line by line — not just the conclusion.
5. Respond separately to each point you disagree with, stating the name of the heading.

The labour expert and the designated jobs: why do they often not fit?

From an automated database, the labour expert selects at least three different jobs performed in the Netherlands, each representing at least three positions, and that is exactly where the errors arise: jobs that exceed the established work capacity on one or more points are nevertheless deemed suitable, without any explanation of why. In terms of substance this is the most promising point of attack in a WIA objection, and it requires no medical knowledge — only precision.

The requirements are laid down in article 9 of the Assessment Decree. What is taken into account is the generally accepted work with which you can earn the most per hour, "which also includes work requiring skills that are generally customary and can be acquired within six months". Those skills are understood to include at least "oral command of the Dutch language and simple computer use". Furthermore:

The flags. For each job, the automated system marks the points at which the workload may exceed your established capacities. The labour expert may still consider such a job suitable, but not tacitly. The Centrale Raad van Beroep has settled case law on this. In ECLI:NL:CRVB:2006:AY9973 the Tribunal held that flags generated by the system must be "provided with a separate explanation", and that in some cases prior consultation with the insurance physician will be necessary; the reasoning need not always be equally extensive, but it must be there. In ECLI:NL:CRVB:2008:BC5366 the Tribunal confirmed that the labour expert "could not, without reasons, convert flags ‘M’ generated by the system into a ‘G’", and that all flags must be provided with a separate explanation showing why the jobs concerned can nevertheless be regarded as suitable.

In ECLI:NL:CRVB:2006:AY9971 the Tribunal explained why this is so strict: the system does have internal functions as a means of communication between insurance physician and labour expert and as a preselection, but the UWV also uses its results externally, to make the medical and labour-expert assessment transparent — and thereby to comply with the duty to give proper reasons for decisions.

How to tackle this, step by step:

1. Request the full labour expert’s report, including the overview of flags and the complete job workload data.
2. Place the FML next to each job, heading by heading.
3. For each job, note every point at which the workload touches or exceeds your established capacities.
4. Check whether a separate explanation is given for it, and whether that explanation really explains why it is nevertheless possible.
5. Check the formal requirements: three jobs, three positions per job, job data no older than 48 months, no night work if your reference worker did no night work.
6. If one job drops out, have the calculation redone: the wage of the middle job determines the outcome, so removing one job can shift the percentage considerably.

By way of illustration. A production worker is assigned three designated jobs: a simple assembly job, a job as a packer and an administrative job. His functional capacity list contains a restriction on reaching and on working above shoulder height. Two of the three jobs carry a flag on exactly those points, accompanied only by the remark that the workload is considered "acceptable". What matters legally is not whether he feels ill enough, but whether the decision is properly reasoned: each flag must be explained separately, and that explanation must make clear why the workload in that specific job stays within his capacities. So the question to be answered is whether the report contains that explanation — and what remains of the calculation if one of the jobs drops out after all. This is an example situation illustrating the rule, not a case of our firm.

How do I bring in my own medical information, and do I really have equal chances?

The UWV may base its decision on the reports of its own insurance physicians provided they have been drawn up with due care, contain no contradictions and are sufficiently comprehensible; it is up to you to make it plausible that this is not the case, and for that you in principle need information from a doctor or medical practitioner. That is the standard that recurs in almost every ruling, and it is also the reason why an objection that merely describes how ill you feel rarely succeeds.

The district court put it as follows in ECLI:NL:RBMNE:2026:3013: the UWV may base decisions on a person’s incapacity for work on medical reports by insurance physicians; those reports must have been drawn up carefully, contain no contradictions and be sufficiently comprehensible. To make it sufficiently plausible that a medical assessment is incorrect, information from a doctor or medical practitioner is in principle required. An important detail from the same consideration: people without medical training can make it plausible that the requirements of due care and consistency have not been met. So you do not need a doctor to argue that the report is internally contradictory or that the flags have not been explained — only to argue that the medical assessment is substantively wrong.

Equality of arms. That the UWV has its own doctors and you do not is a structural imbalance. The administrative court tests this against the principle of equality of arms, derived from the Korošec judgment of the European Court of Human Rights. The Centrale Raad van Beroep expressed the essence in ECLI:NL:CRVB:2021:982: "The essence of the principle of equality of arms is that only if there is a balance between the parties as regards the opportunity to submit evidence is the administrative court able to give an independent and impartial judgment. If the person concerned submits (medical) documents in the proceedings, the administrative court must assess whether those documents give the person concerned a reasonable opportunity to convince the administrative court of his position." The same line follows from ECLI:NL:CRVB:2023:418.

In ECLI:NL:CRVB:2018:763, the reliance on Korošec focused on the argument that the district court should have obtained the advice of an independent expert, because the judge is not a medical expert and must be able to make a pure assessment in a medical dispute without relying too heavily on reports by experts employed by the administrative body.

When does the district court appoint an expert? When you have cast doubt on the correctness of the medical assessment. In ECLI:NL:RBMNE:2024:7092 the district court put it as follows: in deciding whether to make an appointment, the question is whether the claimant, with the grounds of appeal put forward and the medical information submitted, has cast doubt on the correctness of the medical assessment. And in ECLI:NL:RBMNE:2024:6181 an appointment was refused precisely because the report was careful and transparent and no doubt had arisen. Casting doubt is therefore the aim; being proved right on every point is not.

In practice, in order of effectiveness:

If you cannot pay for your own expert, state this explicitly in your notice of appeal and link it to a request for the appointment of an independent expert. Otherwise, silently omitting your own medical material will be interpreted as a lack of evidence to the contrary.

How much is my WGA benefit, and why does working pay?

The WGA in principle starts with a wage-related benefit of 75% of your monthly wage in the first two months and 70% thereafter; when that ends, you receive a wage supplement benefit if you earn at least half of your residual earning capacity, and otherwise a follow-up benefit based on the minimum wage and on your incapacity class. That difference between wage supplement and follow-up benefit is, for most people, the biggest financial fact in their entire file.

Phase 1 — the wage-related benefit. You qualify for it if you meet the reference requirement: under article 58(1)(a) of the WIA Act you must have had at least one working hour per week in at least 26 of the 36 calendar weeks immediately preceding the end of continued pay. The duration is laid down in article 59 of the WIA Act: at least three and at most 24 months, built up on the basis of your employment history — one month per calendar year of employment history up to and including ten years, and above that half a month per calendar year after 2015 and one month per calendar year before 2016. The amount is laid down in article 61(1) of the WIA Act: 0.75 × (monthly wage minus offset income, adjusted for the capped daily wage) over the first two months, and 0.7 × the same formula from the third month.

Phase 2 — the income requirement. After the wage-related benefit ends, the road forks. Article 60(2) of the WIA Act provides: "The income requirement is determined on the day on which entitlement to a WGA benefit arises and, for the insured person who is able to earn more than 20% of the pre-disability earnings per hour through work, is equal to 50% of the residual earning capacity." If you earn at least that amount per calendar month, you receive a wage supplement benefit; if you earn less, a follow-up benefit.

For those who can earn no more than 20% of their pre-disability earnings per hour, under article 60(3) of the WIA Act there is in principle no income requirement. Someone who is fully but not permanently incapacitated therefore does not fall back on the follow-up benefit as long as that situation continues.

Phase 2a — the wage supplement benefit. If you earn at least your remaining earning capacity — under article 61(3) of the WIA Act equal to twice the income requirement — the benefit is as high as the wage-related benefit from the third month (article 61(2)). If you earn at least 50% of that remaining earning capacity but less than all of it, the formula of article 61(4) applies, with a floor under paragraph 5.

Phase 2b — the follow-up benefit. Under article 62(1) of the WIA Act this is the benefit percentage multiplied by the monthly minimum wage (or the monthly wage if that is lower). The percentages are laid down in article 61(6) of the WIA Act:

So that percentage is applied not to your own wage but to the minimum wage. That is where the blow lies: anyone who had a good income and does not meet the income requirement falls back, after the wage-related phase, on a fraction of the minimum wage. That is why working in the WGA really pays — not meant as encouragement, but as an arithmetical fact.

Two more provisions that are rarely discussed:

• Article 63 of the WIA Act: if the insured person who can earn no more than 20% is in a permanent or provisionally permanent state of dependency requiring regular attendance and care, the WGA benefit is increased by multiplication by a factor of at most 100/70 (and 100/75 during the first two months of the wage-related benefit). This increase does not apply if the insured person has been admitted to an institution and the costs of stay are borne by a health insurance.
• Article 63a of the WIA Act: anyone entitled to an incapacity benefit or WGA benefit on 1 July of the calendar year is entitled to an annual allowance, which the UWV pays automatically in the third quarter. The amount is indexed annually on 1 January; check the current amount with the UWV.

Source: WIA Act, articles 58 to 63a inclusive, consulted via wetten.overheid.nl.

What happens at a reassessment if my percentage goes down?

At a reassessment the UWV re-determines your degree of incapacity, and if you drop below 35%, your WGA benefit in principle ends two months later — or one year later if the reduction is because you earn more than 65% of your pre-disability earnings per hour through work. Those two run-off periods are laid down in the Act and are regularly applied incorrectly in practice.

Article 56(2) of the WIA Act: by way of derogation from the main rule, the entitlement to a WGA benefit of the insured person whose degree of incapacity is less than 35% ends two months after the day on which he is no longer partially fit for work, but not earlier than the day on which the wage-related benefit ends. Article 56(3) of the WIA Act extends this to one year where the reduction is because the insured person earns more than 65% of the pre-disability earnings per hour through work. The interpretation of that third paragraph is not self-evident; in ECLI:NL:CRVB:2019:211 precisely that interpretation was at stake in the dispute, and the UWV had wrongly taken the position that a reassessment can only arise where an increase in restrictions is alleged.

If you stay above 35% but your class drops, the benefit changes. Article 61(7) of the WIA Act contains an important brake: the amount is only revised after a change in the degree of incapacity has continued for at least two calendar months. The same rule applies to the follow-up benefit under article 62(4), and article 60(2) contains a comparable rule for revising the income requirement.

Revival. If your entitlement ends and you then deteriorate after all, the entitlement can revive. Article 57 of the WIA Act uses the same structure as articles 48 and 55: five years where the partial fitness for work stems from the same cause, and only four weeks for a different cause.

What to look out for in a reduction decision:

1. Has a new insurance-medical and labour-expert examination really been carried out, or was the reassessment done only "on paper"?
2. What has changed medically compared with the previous FML, and is that change substantiated? Assuming an improvement without identifiable grounds is a defect in the reasoning.
3. Have the new jobs been tested again against the new FML, or have old jobs been reused?
4. Is the start date correct, in view of the run-off period of article 56(2) or (3)?
5. Has the two-month rule of article 61(7) been applied?

And watch out for recovery of overpayments. Under article 76(1) of the WIA Act the UWV revises or withdraws decisions if the benefit has been awarded wrongly or at too high an amount; under paragraph 3 it may refrain from doing so if there are compelling reasons for it. If at the same time an overpayment is reclaimed or a fine is imposed for breach of the duty to provide information under article 27 of the WIA Act, object to each part separately — including the recovery and the fine, because they stand or fall with the underlying decision.

What is my employer’s role, and what does a wage sanction mean?

For two years your employer bears the continued payment of wages and, together with you, the reintegration; if the UWV, in its review at the end of the waiting period, finds that the employer has done too little without good reason, it extends that continued payment of wages by no more than 52 weeks — the wage sanction. For you as an employee this is generally favourable: your income continues and the WIA assessment is postponed.

The legal basis is article 25(9) of the WIA Act: the UWV extends the period during which the insured person is entitled to wages under article 7:629 of the Civil Code "so that the employer can remedy his failure with regard to the obligations or reintegration efforts referred to", the extension amounting to no more than 52 weeks. Two time limits are strict: the decision is given no later than six weeks before the end of the waiting period (paragraph 10), and no extension takes place if it has not been given before the end of the waiting period (paragraph 11). Because the decision is burdensome for the employer, the burden of proof lies with the UWV — see ECLI:NL:RBZWB:2026:2648.

If the employer receives a wage sanction, the processing of your WIA application is suspended under article 64(7) of the WIA Act, and under paragraph 8 resumed as soon as the failure has been remedied, at your request when the employment ends, or at least six weeks before the 52-week period expires.

Voluntary extension. There is also the possibility of extending the continued payment of wages by agreement. Article 24(1) of the WIA Act: after the end of the waiting period, the period during which the insured person is entitled to wages is extended by the UWV at the joint request of the insured person and the employer, unless an exception applies or compelling circumstances preclude it. That can be useful when a reintegration process has almost succeeded, but it also moves the date of your assessment — have the consequences calculated in advance, because it is a decision you cannot easily go back on.

What the employer’s obligations mean for you: the reintegration report that your employer sends with the application also matters for your own file. It states what has been tried, which work was considered suitable and why that did not succeed. Request a copy, and give the UWV your own view of the reintegration in writing — that view belongs in the report. We have written a separate page on dismissal, prohibitions of dismissal and the position of a sick employee: dismissal and sickness.

I am sixty or older: does a different assessment apply?

For people who are sixty or older at the end of the waiting period, there is a temporary simplified assessment in which a labour expert handles the application without an examination by an insurance physician — but only if both you and your (former) employer agree to it. That measure was introduced to reduce waiting times at the UWV and is temporary in nature.

The main outline, as the UWV itself describes it: the labour expert contacts you and your (former) employer, explains the simplified assessment and uses the existing reintegration and Sickness Benefits Act (Ziektewet) data. Both parties must agree. Anyone who can then earn no more than 65% of their old wage generally receives the maximum WGA benefit — 70% of the WIA monthly wage — without a medical assessment. An IVA benefit remains possible for those who can no longer work until retirement age. According to the UWV, the reintroduction of the measure runs from 1 September 2025 to 1 September 2027.

Consider carefully what you are trading in. Without an insurance-medical examination there is no FML, and without an FML there is no medical foundation to fall back on later — for example in an IVA argument or at a reassessment. The speed is real, but it comes at a price. Anyone who believes they are permanently and fully incapacitated is generally well advised to have a medical assessment after all. Have that trade-off made before you agree; withdrawing consent afterwards is difficult.

Source: UWV, information on the simplified WIA assessment for people aged 60 and over.

The UWV rejects my WIA claim: how do I object and how much time do I have?

You object to a WIA decision in writing to the UWV, in principle within six weeks of the day on which the decision was announced; if you let that period lapse, the decision becomes final, however wrong it may be in substance. The time limit follows from article 6:7 of the General Administrative Law Act (Awb) and, under article 6:8(1) of the Awb, starts to run from the day after the announcement — as a rule, therefore, the day after the date at the top of the letter.

The full procedure — what a notice of objection looks like, what a pro forma objection is, how the hearing proceeds, how you appeal to the district court and further appeal to the Centrale Raad van Beroep, and what it costs — is set out in detail on our page objecting to a UWV decision. Read that page alongside this one; here we confine ourselves to what is specifically different for the WIA.

What is different in a WIA objection from other UWV cases:

Watch out for one specific pitfall. If the dispute is not about your WIA percentage but about whether your unfitness for work under the Sickness Benefits Act (Ziektewet) continues — for example a declaration that you have recovered — then under article 75k of the Sickness Benefits Act an objection period of two weeks applies in principle instead of six. So always read the notice of legal remedies at the bottom of the decision, and act within two weeks if in doubt.

My incapacity for work is caused by an accident: what does that mean?

If your incapacity for work is the result of an accident for which someone else is liable, two tracks run side by side: the WIA assessment by the UWV and your damages claim against the liable party — and the outcome of the first has a direct effect on the second. Anyone who does not see that connection may give away in one track what is the core of their case in the other.

The link lies in the loss of earning capacity. In personal injury cases, that is usually the largest item of damage: the income you would have earned without the accident, minus what you still receive now. Your WIA benefit belongs in that calculation as income that you do receive. That means two things:

• A higher WIA benefit does not reduce your personal injury claim, it shifts it. The money comes from a different purse; the loss of income that remains is still for the account of the liable party. So there is no reason to hold back in the WIA track "because there is a claim running anyway".
• The opposite mistake is more harmful. If the UWV assesses you at less than 35%, the liability insurer will generally cite that finding as evidence that you can still work. An unchallenged WIA decision thus takes on a life of its own in your damages file, years after the objection period has expired.

Also note the different standards. The UWV assesses theoretical earning capacity in generally accepted work, and under article 6(2) of the WIA Act it disregards whether you can actually get that work. In the personal injury track, by contrast, what matters is your actual earning capacity on the labour market, in your own situation, with your own education and employment history. Those two outcomes may therefore differ, and that difference can be explained — provided you explain it. What you state about your restrictions in one file must be consistent with what you state in the other; inconsistency is the defence most often used in both tracks.

There is also practical overlap: the same medical documents, the same practitioners, the same description of what you can no longer do. It pays to build those files up together rather than twice separately. You can read more about liability, heads of damage and dealing with insurers on our page on personal injury.

What can you do yourself? A practical sequence

Most WIA files are not won or lost at the hearing, but in the weeks around the consultation with the insurance physician and in the care with which the labour expert’s report is checked. This is the sequence that makes the most difference in practice.

Before the assessment:

1. From the start of your illness, keep a simple file: symptoms, treatments, what you have stopped doing, what help you receive.
2. Keep the reintegration report and all documents from the occupational physician.
3. Ask your practitioners in good time for a letter about restrictions and prognosis — not just about the diagnosis.
4. Submit your application no later than eleven weeks before the end of the waiting period (article 64(3) of the WIA Act).
5. Prepare for the consultation with concrete examples and durations, not in general terms.

After the decision, within the first few days:

1. Find the date at the top of the letter and add six weeks. Put that date in your diary.
2. Immediately request the full file: the insurance-medical report, the FML, the labour expert’s report, the job descriptions, the overview of flags and the calculation of the percentage.
3. If necessary, file a pro forma objection and supplement the grounds later — a short, timely notice of objection is worth more than an extensive one that is too late.
4. Check the FML for internal contradictions with the report itself (article 4 of the Assessment Decree).
5. Check each designated job for flags and for the formal requirements of article 9 of the Assessment Decree.
6. Check the pre-disability earnings: number of hours, allowances, structural overtime, reference period.
7. Request letters from your practitioners and submit them before the hearing, not after.
8. If you have no income now, look straight away at provisional relief from the district court.

What you had better not do: agree to a simplified assessment without understanding the consequences, "object" by telephone (that does not stop the time limit), or make your symptoms seem smaller to the insurance physician than they are because you feel uncomfortable. That last one happens more often than the opposite, and it is virtually impossible to repair afterwards.

When do you need a lawyer in a WIA case?

Not every WIA decision calls for a lawyer, but there are situations in which the difference between having and not having expert assistance concerns a benefit over decades. These are the signals.

What a specialised lawyer adds in this type of case is less spectacular than expected and at the same time decisive: requesting the complete file, placing the FML next to each job, checking the flags, verifying the calculation and making the medical evidence to the contrary connect precisely to the points where the report is shaky. With us, you can have your decision assessed free of charge before you decide anything — and that is best done within the first weeks after the letter.

Brief overview: the WIA in twelve lines

Put your situation to us

If you have received a WIA decision you disagree with, speed is what matters most: the time limit is running, and requesting the file takes time. Call 070 450 0300 or submit your question via arslan.nl/contact. We have offices in The Hague, Rotterdam, Amsterdam, Utrecht, Tilburg and Eindhoven, and our firm also speaks Turkish and Polish.

Our offices: visiting address and direct telephone number

Each office has its own direct number. The first conversation is free of charge and confidential; besides Dutch we speak Turkish, Polish and English.

Not sure which office is most convenient? Then call 070 4500 300 or send your question through the contact form; we will put you through to the right colleague.