Netherlands – The Worlds Biggest Tax Haven?

This is the Netherlands, a fine country of flowers, windmills and loose regulations around the finer things in life. This country is in many ways like a lot of very developed European economies we have explored earlier on the channel, very high living standards, good social mobility a strong economy and healthy inequality but the Netherlands hides a bit of a secret behind its lovely flowerful smile, it is one of the largest tax havens in the world.

But how does this make any sense, the Netherlands has an high income tax rate of over fifty percent for top earners, it has a corporate tax rate of 25%, and there are not even particularly strict laws around things like banking privacy like there are in countries like Switzerland, so all of this is making the Netherlands sound like a pretty terrible tax haven all in all, so why is it so popular?

In this video we will find out!

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References –

Loomis, S.C., 2011. The double Irish sandwich: Reforming overseas tax havens

Thorne, D., 2013. The Double Irish and Dutch Sandwich tax strategies: Could a general anti-avoidance rule counteract the problems caused by the utilisation of these structures?.

Brothers, J.P., 2014. From the Double Irish to the Bermuda Triangle. Tax Analysts

Van Dijk, M., Weyzig, F. and Murphy, R., 2006. The Netherlands: a tax haven?

Weyzig, F., 2013. Tax treaty shopping: structural determinants of Foreign Direct Investment routed through the Netherlands. International Tax and Public Finance

Gordon, R.A., 1981. Tax havens and their use by United States taxpayers-An overview. Intertax

archive.nytimes.com/www.nytimes.com/interactive/2012/04/28/business/Double-Irish-With-A-Dutch-Sandwich.html?ref=business