The tax that the Netherlands has levied on payments to tax havens since 2021 has generated 50 million euros for the treasury. That is not structural, warns outgoing State Secretary Marnix van Rij. “By 2022, not all companies had changed their structure, and 50 million in taxes were received in our treasury,” says FD journalist Laurens Berentsen.
According to Berentsen, the idea was to impose a so-called withholding tax when companies pay royalties or interest to tax havens such as the Bermudas or the Cayman Islands. And that those companies would automatically stop making those transfers when tax had to be paid on them.
‘Not all companies had changed their structure in 2022 so that money still flowed into the treasury’
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Slow response companies
However, not all companies had changed their structure by 2022 so that money was still flowing into the treasury, Berentsen says. That is why Van Rij also warns the House and points out the probably one-off nature of this windfall.
According to Berentsen, the withholding tax is partly the Dutch response to international criticism that the Netherlands facilitates tax avoidance. ‘Every now and then the Netherlands also appears in various studies by non-governmental organizations as an important transit country or as a tax haven,’ says Berentsen.
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The Netherlands is improving its life
Van Rij says that tax avoidance by multinationals is not only difficult to measure, but also ‘wrong assumptions’ are made and wrong profits are added together where it is not justified. According to Berentsen, Van Rij points out that Dutch policy has paid off in recent years. The State Secretary points to the positive comments that the European Commission and the IMF have on the Netherlands.
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