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Comment by yunohn | Hacker News Reader

The Netherlands is a tax haven for corporations. Individuals bear the brunt of ensuring a high QoL. Median income in 2021 is €36.500, so quite low tbh.

The only kind of income you can avoid taxes on is capital gains - i.e. investing in stocks or real estate. Obviously this is not feasible for the general population, and as such, most people spend their entire monthly income on rent/mortgage, kids, and living expenses. There is no concept of saving, because the assumption is that you can accumulate enough pension to live off of.

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I have known many Dutch people over the years who have gotten a lot of benefits from the state from unemployment to housing. Some of it clearly fraudulently too. Seems to be unsustainable.

While I do not condone benefits fraud, it’s just a drop in the pond.

Government projects are quite corrupt, and often go way over budget. Of course, this is a global problem as well.

The main problem is corporate tax evasion. Pretty much every multinational funnels money via NL, while paying almost nothing.

For example - IKEA, Walt Disney, FAANG, Uber, and innumerable more are all Dutch BVs for most global activities.

Sorry I agree with you. I didn't mean fraud was a big cost, only that social spending (including non-fraudulent) seems to be very high and not tightly controlled (which as a side effect allows for easy fraud). From the outside society seems very stratified. Plenty of Telsa's in Amsterdam and people with expensive tastes. NL is obviously a very wealthy place even compared to neighbouring countries but also has a large less wealthy population. This is another angle to the problem (in addition to the corp tax regime) because it unfairly puts the tax burden on people like yourself.

Social spending is quite high, but I’d like to believe that atleast it’s enriching the average person and not only corporate execs.

The reason there’s so many Teslas is because up until 2021, you could get significant tax benefits, if you purchased an electric car via your employer for “work”. If you look past Teslas, you’ll see that most people own average family cars.

Amsterdam does have people with “expensive tastes”, but that’s not representative of the rest of the country. It’s similar to what you’d see in New York or London vs. the rest of their respective countries.

Most of the wealthy people I know own businesses (and as such benefit from the lower taxes), or own lots of rentable real estate.

>you could get significant tax benefits

This is a significant piece of information in this discussion.

Well, again, this only really helps people who are able to swing such an expensive car as a “work expense”. In absolute numbers, Teslas are a minority of 0.4% in the NL car market.

source - https://www.statista.com/statistics/780316/market-share-of-t...

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