Fundamental Tax Reform in The Netherlands

The Dutch Parliament has passed legislation for a new income tax that abolishes the current tax on personal capital income and substitutes it by a presumptive capital income tax, which is in fact a net wealth tax. This paper contrasts this wealth tax with a conventional realization-based capital gains tax, a retrospective capital gains tax which attempts to charge interest on the deferred tax, and a capital accretion tax which taxes capital gains as they accrue. None of the approaches meets all criteria for a 'good' income tax, i.e., equity, efficiency, and administrative feasibility. We thus... Mehr ...

Verfasser: Cnossen, Sijbren
Bovenberg, Lans
Dokumenttyp: doc-type:workingPaper
Erscheinungsdatum: 2000
Verlag/Hrsg.: Munich: Center for Economic Studies and ifo Institute (CESifo)
Schlagwörter: ddc:330 / Capital income taxation / capital gains taxation / tax reform / wealth tax
Sprache: Englisch
Permalink: https://search.fid-benelux.de/Record/base-29217209
Datenquelle: BASE; Originalkatalog
Powered By: BASE
Link(s) : http://hdl.handle.net/10419/75628

The Dutch Parliament has passed legislation for a new income tax that abolishes the current tax on personal capital income and substitutes it by a presumptive capital income tax, which is in fact a net wealth tax. This paper contrasts this wealth tax with a conventional realization-based capital gains tax, a retrospective capital gains tax which attempts to charge interest on the deferred tax, and a capital accretion tax which taxes capital gains as they accrue. None of the approaches meets all criteria for a 'good' income tax, i.e., equity, efficiency, and administrative feasibility. We thus conclude that the effective and neutral taxation of capital income can best be ensured through a combination of (a) a capital accretion tax to capture the returns on easy-to-value financial products, (b) a capital gains tax with interest to tax the returns on hard-to-value real estate and small businesses, and (c) a broad presumptive capital income tax, i.e., a net wealth tax, to account for the utility of holding wealth. We favor uniform and moderate proportional tax rates in the context of a dual income tax under which capital income is taxed separately from labor income.