The Ministry of Finance (MoF) provides an overview of the most important tax changes as of January 1, 2018, which were approved by parliament on 19th December 2017. It concerns changes in the field of income tax, payroll tax, gift and inheritance tax, taxes on environmental basis, car taxes, corporate taxation, VAT and excise duties.
The most important changes are given below:
- The upper limit first corporate tax bracket will not be increased as proposed, and therefore remain same at EUR 200,000 in 2018;
- The excise duty on all mineral oils increased with effect from January 1, 2018 as due to the annual indexing;
- The effective rate of the innovation (IP) box regime income tax will be increased from 5% to 7% by January 1, 2018;
- The withholding exemption that applies for EU/EEA countries is will be extended to third countries with which Netherlands has concluded a tax treaty;
- Dividend withholding tax liability will be extended to qualifying holdings in cooperative holding companies (i.e. membership rights that grant an entitlement to at least 5% of the annual profit or to at least 5% of the liquidation dividends) if in the previous year, their activities usually consist for 70% or more of owning shareholdings that qualify for the participation exemption (directly or indirectly) loans to affiliated companies.
- Cigarettes, smoking tobacco and cigars will become more expensive from 1 April 2018.
