taxes

Queen Maxima fulfills all her tax obligations in Argentina, government information service Rijksvoorlichtingsdienst said following reports in Argentine media accusing the Dutch queen of tax evasion.

Argentine investigative website El Cohete a la Luna reported that Queen Maxima never reported improvements to the real estate and infrastructure on the land she and King Willem-Alexander own in Argentina, her country of birth. As a result, Argentina is losing out on tax revenues, according to the site.

The Dutch government collected 25.3 billion euros in environmental taxes and levies last year, 3 percent more than in 2015, according to figures Statistics Netherlands released on Monday. Households carried almost two thirds of that amount. 

Thanks to higher than expected revenue and lower than expected spending, the Dutch government is left with a 200 million euros surplus on the 2016 budget, Minister Jeroen Dijsselbloem of Finance said in a letter to parliament on Thursday, ANP reports.

The surplus can almost entirely be attributed to the total tax and premium revenue of last year, which came out 3.1 billion euros higher than projected. Expenses were 0.2 billion euros lower. In the Autumn calculations the government still expected a budget deficit of 3.1 billion euros.

The Netherlands is still making secret tax deals with multinational companies, according to an European report on which Dutch research foundation SOMO worked. The Netherlands remains one of the ost important countries in Europe when it comes to tax evasion, the report states according to ANP.

Last year the Netherlands made 236 secret tax deals. That means that the country is 3rd in Europe in the number of secret tax deals made with multinationals last year. Only Belgium and Luxembourg made more.

Roughly 165 thousand people filed their taxes right at the May 1 extended deadline. Nearly nine million individuals filed their taxes on time, an increase of about 400 thousand compared to a year earlier, the tax office announced on Monday.

Petrol prices in the Netherlands dropped to 1.30 euros per liter for the first time in six years today

Wealthy Dutch people are abusing tax havens abroad to prevent from being taxed on 129 billion euros in deposits, a former tax inspector told television show Nieuwsuur. The money is held in the accounts of shell companies based in the Cayman Islands, Seychelles and Virgin Islands, among other locations, the researcher, Jan van Koningsveld, said.

The price of crude oil has almost halved over the past year, but this price decline has had little effect on the price of petrol and diesel. Over the same period, the petrol price decreased by an average of only 5.1 percent.

The leader of the FNV union, Ton Heerts, spoke against social services for freelancers in an interview with FD. He says self-employed people making use of disability, sickness and unemployment benefits undermines the entire social welfare system.

The Netherlands will sign treaties with 23 African nations aimed at preventing locally operating enterprises from using Dutch jurisdiction to evade taxation in their countries. The enterprises will be prevented from formally locating themselves in the Netherlands simply by registering a post office box, reports Volkskrant.

Expanding local authorities' capacity to levy taxes need not diminish residents' disposable income, says a policy brief published Thursday by the Dutch Central Planning Bureau (CPB). It also argues that a more localized approach to taxation collection may create 15,000 additional jobs over time.