Exactly. The tax haven aspect is mostly the level of transparency with other countries. If you're from a non-Western country (because there is data sharing among EU and US/Canada to some extent) have $10M and decide to invest it in the Netherlands or another tax haven, it's pretty unlikely the Netherlands is going to be all that helpful in sharing that relevant information with your home country so they can actually collect taxes.
If you're actually a legal resident of the Netherlands well that doesn't help you at all since the Netherlands gov't has complete visibility into financial transactions within the country.
Same with the US. Great place to hide money if you're from certain countries since Uncle Sam doesn't give two shits if some countries can't collect taxes.
Now you go to the crux of it, and how devilish this all is for the Dutch citizens. :-)
You see, to note how intellectually dishonest the authorities that implement this system are,
your argument, that the taxes rates in the Netherlands are not that low ... Was what the
Dutch Economy minister used, when the Obama administration labeled the Netherlands
a tax haven back in 2009 already.
For the citizen, it is indeed, a country with one of the biggest individual
Total Tax loads in the world. You get a flurry of them and its not really progressive.
You are basically paying into one of three tax brackets and the top rate
of 49.5 percent comes very quickly for anything above to €68,507 ( aprox 80,000 USD )
The current world top countries by income tax brackets are:
Ivory Coast 60%
Finland 56.95%
Japan 55.97%
Denmark 55.9%
Austria 55%
Sweden 52.9%
Aruba 52%
Belgium 50%
Israel 50%
Slovenia 50%
Netherlands 49.5%
As I do not believe anybody in the Ivory Coast is paying those tax brackets...and as Aruba is part of
the Kingdom of the Netherlands :-) you are definitely in the top ten but that
is only half of the story. After you go through all of these:
Income tax (inkomstenbelasting)
Payroll tax (loonheffing)
VAT sales tax (BTW / omzetbelasting)
Import tax (douane)
Motor vehicle tax (motorrijtuigbelasting)
Inheritance tax (erfbelasting)
Gift tax (schenkbelasting)
Transfer tax (overdrachtsbelasting)
Most towns even have a Dog tax! ( but funnily enough...not a Cat tax...)
"... It makes no difference if the dog is big or small..." , what means
they actually thought about it.
Believe it or not, there is even an Exit Tax if you decide to
say its too much, and you want to leave the country with your assets.
You then get all of the local ones:
The system is organized for the corporations, and special tax structures organized by the big four, and other
organizations close to to the Dutch political system.
"...There is no revolving door policy for departing Dutch civil servants. Employees
are free to take up any new position once they've served their notice period..."
The current world top countries by income tax brackets are:
Ivory Coast 60% Finland 56.95% Japan 55.97% Denmark 55.9% Austria 55% Sweden 52.9% Aruba 52% Belgium 50% Israel 50% Slovenia 50% Netherlands 49.5%
It doesn't help that tax systems are so complicated that it can be almost impossible to make meaningful like-for-like comparisons in discussions like this.
For example, the UK isn't listed there, yet in reality the way our system works creates brackets where some people do have an effective marginal income tax rate over 60%. Worse, the system isn't entirely progressive, because those brackets don't coincide with the final marginal rate of income tax for those with the highest incomes.
Rather like the Dutch, for those of us living in the UK and those of us operating small businesses here, who are paying the full intended tax rates, it's frustrating to see the games played by the huge multinationals and UHNW individuals that are clearly forms of tax avoidance, and to see the UK labelled as a tax haven. I doubt anyone living near me feels like they're benefitting from an unusually low-tax economy right now!
That's not exactly the same thing is it? That's a tax break granted to individuals if they're highly qualified and recruited from abroad to come live and work in the Netherlands.
I doubt this is what people are talking about when they say the Netherlands is a tax heaven. Italy and Spain have similar schemes.
