28th April 2017

#16: Fishing expeditions, or not?

Transparency is a keyword these days. The banking secrecy is something that belongs to the past. All over the world information is exchanged between countries and tax authorities in order to counteract tax evasion. Also in the Netherlands, the Dutch Tax Authorities have intensified their efforts to prevent tax evasion. However, it is up for debate whether these authorities are overreaching their powers. In this article we take a closer look at two recent cases in which the Dutch Tax Authorities pushed the limits in their attempt to receive information from UBS and American Express by submitting information requests to foreign tax authorities. Although the Courts in these two cases allowed the information exchange, we have some critical notes.READ MORE

27th January 2017

#13: Taxes and the upcoming elections

Tax evasion and tax fraud are two different things even though the media tries to make you believe otherwise. Tax fraud is deliberately not filing a complete tax return due to which the public treasury is harmed. Classic tax fraud usually is committed in a non-transparent way, so the authorities have a hard time to discover it. Tax evasion however is no more than avoiding to have to pay (certain) taxes. Even though the difference between the two is quite clear, the two get generalized because tax evasion has become an unpopular phenomenon. The Dutch authorities in their ‘fight against fraud’ make grateful use of this situation, especially with the upcoming elections in March 2017.

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29th April 2016

#04: The pressure is On

The general opinion nowadays in de media is that tax evasion and tax friendly structures are one and the same as tax fraud. It is the common opinion that it is morally reprehensible. The recent publications about the Panama Papers are a confirmation for those who are of this opinion. However, the publications do not show whether the involved persons and entities actually hid their wealth or whether they were not transparent about it towards the tax authorities or even had to be. Nonetheless their names are mentioned in the newspapers and all over the internet. Without knowing the complete facts about the actual tax behavior of these persons this is naming and shaming in its purest form. For governments and tax authorities who are in ‘the fight against tax fraud’ the deterrent effect of naming and shaming seems to be a welcome tool to further break down – the usage of – the banking secrecy. In the past years the European banking secrecy has been attacked on various occasions. We will go in to the recent developments of the strive of the Dutch tax authorities against ‘hidden’ foreign bank accounts of Dutch tax payers in for instance Switzerland.READ MORE