Netherlands world's 4th biggest tax haven

The Netherlands is still one of the world's main tax havens, coming in fourth place on Tax Justice Network's biennial ranking of tax havens. Only the British Virgin Islands, the Cayman Islands and Bermuda scored worse than the Netherlands when it came to tax avoidance.

Tax Justice Network looked at the extent to which a country's laws allow companies to avoid tax, and examined how much money from multinationals flowed through a country using such schemes. The Netherlands was also in fourth place when the index was first published in 2019.

"The fact that the Netherlands now again is one of the top tax havens worldwide is shameful," Arnold Merkies of Tax Justice Netherlands said to ANP. "This confirms our view that the past cabinets took half measures against tax avoidance. As a result, not only the Netherlands misses out on government revenues, but also many other countries."

Merkies called for the new Dutch government to make tackling tax avoidance a priority and "listen less to companies that are constantly arguing for more tax benefits".

A coalition of civil society organizations already wrote a manifesto with concrete proposals to tackle tax avoidance. According to Tax Justice, political parties GroenLinks, PvdA, SP, ChristenUnie and PvdD are among the signatories of the manifesto.

World's top tax havens, according to Tax Justice Network:

1. British Virgin Islands
2. Cayman Islands
3. Bermuda
4. Netherlands
5. Switzerland
6. Luxembourg
7. Hong Kong
8. Jersey
9. Singapore
10. United Arab Emirates