This week, Secretary of State Van Rijk (Finance) sent a letter to the House of Representatives about the “side effects” of recovering the excess wealth tax. By correcting these statements, the “income” that people in Box 3 had in the past will decrease. This, in turn, means that in those years they may be entitled to higher bonuses, a lower rent increase, a larger discount for seniors, or a higher scholarship for children studying.

In total, this relates to 10 schemes that will certainly have an impact in block 3, and a number of other schemes where this is possible. “Is this possible?” asks MP Umtzigt. “It worries me a little bit,” he says, referring to the many implementation problems government agencies are already facing: “Just take it easy in this country.”

PVV MP Mulder also wonders if this can be arranged smoothly. Suddenly, everything is automatically calculated for each person. This is possible. Can the Secretary of State explain how this suddenly became possible? Nijboer, MP, of PvdA agrees: “The computation does not seem that simple to me.” CU Grinwis MP believes it is “absolutely necessary to prevent Tax and Customs Administration from collapsing under pressure and from further delaying the recovery of the allowance issue.”

‘side effects’

According to Van Rig, the “collateral damage” of the Box 3 compensation isn’t too bad. According to preliminary calculations, this concerns a “narrow target group”. According to the Secretary of State, implementing a savings tax refund is difficult, but not impossible: “It is not that the tax and customs administration is deteriorating because of this.”

D66 MP De Jong is also concerned that the tax authorities are too busy with recoveries to be at the cost of introducing the new Block 3 tax planned for 2025. “It would be very painful if we did not move to a better system because we are correcting an outdated system.”

The coalition party VVD also has doubts about the interpretation of the new wealth tax. This should become a tax on capital “increase”: in addition to income from interest, dividends and rent, tax must also be paid on the development of the value of capital, such as increases in the prices of investments.

VVD MP Idsinga is concerned about whether people will not have to pay taxes on “paper” profit from real estate, for example, that does not generate money in someone’s wallet. The liberal asks, “How do we deal with situations where there is no liquidity for people to pay that tax because the wealth is tied up somewhere?”

The savings tax was a theft, but how does the government solve it? Martin Visser and Hermann Stam discuss this in the podcast A matter of cents†