Dutch Finance Secs. made pact to keep sweetheart tax deals secret from other EU countries: report

State Secretaries of Finance Joop Wijn (2004), Frans Weekers (2011) and Eric Wiebes (2015) all agreed to make controversial tax deals with multinational corporations, and not tell other European countries about it, Trouw reports based on internal documents from the Ministry of Finance that were released last weeks. The documents show that Finanace officials internally warned for years of the possible consequences of such agreements.

The controversial tax deals allow companies to not pay taxes on a large part of their profits. This makes the Netherlands an attractive location for multinationals, but harms other countries. A report from 2012 uses an example of a company that made 500 million euros in profit in the Netherlands and was only taxed on 25 million euros of it. The remaining 475 million euros were never taxed

The Netherlands makes matters worse by giving companies permission for the tax structure in advance, and then not informing the companies' home countries about the deal, the Finance officials write. If the Netherlands informed the home countries, that would be detrimental to "the attractiveness of the Dutch business climate".

According to a European report published by research foundation SOMO in December, the Netherlands is one of the main players in Europe when it comes to international tax evasion, despite the government saying it wants to tackle the problem.