Shady tax deals must end
Shady tax deals must end
An end must be put to the shady tax deals made between the revenue service and multinational corporations, says SP Member of Parliament and finance spokesman Arnold Merkies. 'Clearly the deal between Starbucks and the revenue service is not as clean as Secretary of State Wiebes has always led us to believe,’ says Merkies. ‘It looks very much as if the Netherlands has closed its eyes to tax avoidance by this huge international company. I’d like to see a line drawn here and all tax agreements that multinationals make with the treasury made public.’
According to Merkies, Secretary of State for Finance Eric Wiebes, responsible for the revenue service, has a great deal of explaining to do. ‘According to the Secretary of State there was no problem, and he allowed the agreement with Starbucks to go through on the nod, but that turned out not to be the case. I want him to say why this firm was given favourable treatment and received thirty million euros in tax breaks, while small businesses and people in our country have been crushed for years by heavier tax burdens and austerity.’
In addition to making public all tax agreements between multinationals and the revenue service, Merkies wants to see corporations obliged in their annual reports to declare how much tax they are paying per country. He intends to propose this during a debate with the Secretary of State.