GroenLinks sees no benefit in compensating all of the box 3 savers who have been scammed. The party only wants to meet savers with small capital. Compensation must also be paid by wealth holders. That’s what Rep. Tom van der Lee said at GroenLinks. Today and tomorrow, the House of Representatives will debate a billion-dollar plan to offset the illegally declared “savings tax.”
There are now two compensation proposals on the table, the first alternative would cost 6.9 billion euros, and the second 11.7. At the end of last year, the High Court ruled that the Dutch way of taxing via square 3 on what people earn on their assets violated the European Human Rights Treaty.
The savings tax was found to be unfair because the tax was levied on an invented fixed return of 4 percent for assets of over €50,000, or over €100,000 for tax partners. This is while people are earning little from their savings due to low interest rates. So savers paid a tax on returns they never made before.
The House of Representatives voted unanimously in early February in favor of compensating small savers from the third square. According to van der Ley, you as a legislator can set certain limits. The house said: Make up for the saving little one. Then you can discuss what you consider a small savings. I think that people with savings of more than 1 million euros and other investments, just to be clear, are not small savers.
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There is a huge difference in the Netherlands
Van der Ley points out that after the United States, the Netherlands has the most inequality of all OECD countries and is critical of the current plans on the table. Rutte didn’t prioritize this in all of his vaults, and he didn’t adapt Square 3 in a timely manner. Now we see that in the variants being proposed, the cheaper alternative already costs 7 billion euros, but that’s because 60 percent of that amount ends up with people with savings of more than 250 thousand euros, we don’t think that’s a small savings.
According to Van der Ley, 20 percent of the amount ends up with people with savings of more than 1 million euros.
Suppose you choose compensation and are more generous than we would like, then we have the condition that it be paid by the wealthy. It certainly cannot be the case that people without wealth have to pay more taxes to compensate people with wealth.
The letter from the Cabinet to the House of Representatives has not yet specified how exactly the compensation will be paid. This will be taken into account in the decision-making process for the Spring Note, as a wealth tax will also be an option. The most expensive copy is approaching 12 billion. Where should this money in the name of God come from… We also find it strange that the Cabinet did not actually indicate in the letter the options available.
For GroenLinks, how this funding is provided is really important, says Van der Lee. “We cannot approve options where people without assets bleed. As of July 1 this year, the tax authorities would like to repay billions to deceived savers.
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wealth tax
GroenLinks has long been in favor of a wealth tax and sees the problems surrounding Square 3 as the driving force behind this proposal. “We only want a wealth tax and not just a capital gains tax, but also a wealth tax. Because people with very large assets can really contribute more to society. Now the tax is mainly paid by work.
The problem in the Netherlands is that the actual rates between squares 1, 2 and 3 are completely incompatible. We’ve been waiting a long time with a major tax reform and that should really start with Rutte 4, where wealth should be taxed more than income.
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