Dutch to settle €643m EU tax bill by year end

The Netherlands will pay the European Commission's additional tax of 642.7 million euro by the end of this year. This is written in the Autumn Memorandum which Minister Jeroen Dijsselbloem of Finance sent to the Chamber last week. The Cabinet decided not to make use of the payment arrangement that the EU offered to Member States, stating that the additional tax only needs to be paid by September 1st, 2015. The Cabinet chose to work the additional tax into the the current budget for 2014. The Cabinet has extra money in the budget due to ING's early repayment of their state aid from 2008. On November 7th ING paid 1.025 billion euro to Finance, six months ahead of schedule. "We literally have plenty of money", said the minister after the cabinet meeting. "If you have money in your wallet, you'd better pay your bills. This also relieves the budget for next year."