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Comment by ExoticPearTree | Hacker News Reader

> The basic idea is that The Netherlands would rather help a big corporate avoid paying 10% tax in another country, if it means they pay 1% in The Netherlands. Or even 0% corporate taxes and only some payroll tax for the people working at the Dutch office (job creation for tax lawyers who, as established earlier, lead a stress-free life).

This is actually pretty smart on their part.

What most countries don't want to accept is that when the cost of business is too high, companies will either pack up and leave or pay tax advisors on how to move every cent of profit to another country that is business friendly and their dreams of collecting billions in tax remain just that, dreams.

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Sure but then when every country competes in a race to the bottom for corporate taxes, what do you think will happen to government funds and government funded social projects?

They'd have to massively cut government spending while somehow not affecting the people.

The taxes in the Netherlands for personal income are incredibly high (the highest bracket is 55%). I think it is better for the government to have as many people as possible employed to collect lots of taxes, instead of trying to tax companies.

It is much easier for a company to set up shop somewhere else than for an employee to just pack up and uproot his/her whole life to relocate for a job.

Isn't that just increasing the wealth inequality?

My point was that instead of driving companies away like most countries do with excessive taxation, the Netherlands does almost everything it can if it means those companies create local jobs.

I am really not interested in any of the left "oh, but what about $red_herring_of_the_day?" type of discussion.

I'm not sure this is a red haring. What Netherlands is doing is detrimental to smaller EU companies who don't benefits from this tax avoidance scheme that only benefits the big corps in the Netherlands at the expense of the other EU members.

And this isn't a race worth competing in since it only benefits the super wealthy elite corpos at the expense of society.

Ideally we should regulate what the Netherlands is doing as an EU member, and not enter in a race to the bottom with it.

It is.

> This is actually pretty smart on their part.

It's the literal concept of a tax haven.

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