[yunohn]

Meanwhile, the irony amidst all this is that the Netherlands is the largest tax haven for companies globally. Literally every brand/company you can think of is legally headquartered in NL for tax purposes.

Eg: FAANG, Disney, IKEA, Uber, Mars Chocolate, etc etc

[Deukhoofd]

There's a tax change that will tackle it, that should become active relatively soon.

https://www.rijksoverheid.nl/actueel/nieuws/2021/03/25/wetsv...

[jmopp]

What makes it worse is that the top bracket for income tax kicks in around €68k per annum, and is 49.5%

[chekibreki]

Are you sure you’re not mixing up the Netherlands with Ireland?

[yunohn]

No, I’m not. Most of these companies also have incorporated in Ireland alongside the Netherlands to exploit this loophole:

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dutch_Sandwich

> Ireland has the BEPS tools to enable US IP-heavy multinationals to reroute global profits into Ireland, tax-free. The Netherlands then enables these Irish profits to get to a classical tax haven (e.g. the Cayman Islands or Jersey) without incurring EU withholding tax.

I empathise with your the confusion - corruption has enabled these companies to construct confusing and elaborate ways of avoiding their fair share of taxes.

[candiodari]

> corruption has enabled these companies to construct confusing and elaborate ways of avoiding their fair share of taxes.

But these are the actions OF THE STATE, not of said companies. Oh and if you think rerouting profits through Ireland is scandalous you should check out Royal Dutch Shell and their tax deal. And it's not just the Netherlands that does that, presidential Total does the same. And BP. But please don't think this is limited to oil companies, they're just the biggest fish in the pond. Their profits and payouts make Google look like a children's bank account, and WHO they go to is very telling.

https://www.reuters.com/article/global-oil-tax-havens-idUSKB...

States themselves, the people that make up the state, want to avoid taxes even more than multinationals do. You want this to stop? Your enemies are Royal Families, presidential Families (in France), dynasties in supreme courts of countries in the EU, political parties, ... these sorts of people. When it comes to payouts, by the way, these state companies make FANGs look like children's bank accounts.

And I would like to point out one major difference: these multinational billionnaires have at least done something for us, however ambivalent we may feel about their ethics. Dutch Royals have NEVER dug up any oil or so much as initiated a single green initiative at Shell. They have abused their power to get shares of these companies, and that's the sum total of their contribution. There is no ambivalence about ethics here: the people benefitting from these state cash cow companies have never contributed anything at all to these companies, nor do they intend to.

[disgruntledphd2]

> corruption has enabled these companies to construct confusing and elaborate ways of avoiding their fair share of taxes.

I'm not sure one can consider it corruption, per se, rather it's tax competition on the part of smaller EU states.

To my mind, it's not that the countries are being bribed by companies, rather that the laws attract a (far too small proportion of) global/EU revenue to be taxed in their country.

[jeltz]

The Dutch allow companies to negotiate individual rates which are kept secret. No, this is not competition, it is corruption.

[Dracophoenix]

Economic agency is not corruption. It's no different from negotiating tax breaks with local governments here in the United States.

[account42]

You're right, it's no different: both are corruption.

[yunohn]

I mean, you’re free to blindly dismiss obvious corruption - but it’s quite obvious that these loopholes were designed, and often illegal.

Eg, https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ireland_v_Commission

[NoboruWataya]

The article you posted states that Apple won their appeal against the finding of illegality in the ECJ.

Taxation is not an EU competence so in general it is not within the power of the EU to declare a member state's tax policy to be illegal. Vestager has been trying to use state aid as a vehicle to circumvent that restriction but the ECJ rebuffed her attempt to do that in Ireland. A big part of the problem is that the state aid findings rely on the assertion that tax authorities applied special rules to one particular company, which is typically not the case.

[janandonly]

Both.

https://www.oxfam.org/en/research/netherlands-tax-haven

[Freak_NL]

Both are tax havens.