4 ms·

Dutch Lawmakers Approve a 36% Tax on Unrealized Crypto, Stock, and Bond Gains

mikestew 8mo ago
Have to sell your stock because you can't otherwise pay the taxes? Yeah, well, fuck you because the government is having budget shortfalls, and it's easier for the government to do it that way. "State Secretary for Taxation Eugène Heijnen acknowledged during parliamentary debate that the caretaker government would have preferred to tax investment returns only when they are actually realized, but said this was not feasible by 2028, as taxing unrealized gains would avoid billions in budget losses and is easier to implement." <emphasis mine>
- KellyCriterion 8mo ago
  do you have a link to that quote in the second paragraph?
  - mikestew 8mo ago
    It’s from TFA, here’s your link: Ctrl-F.
    - mikestew 8mo ago
      Or maybe this works: https://www.imidaily.com/europe/dutch-lawmakers-approve-a-36-tax-on-unrealized-crypto-stock-and-bond-gains/#:~:text=State%20Secretary%20for,easier%20to%20implement.%C2%A0 https://www.imidaily.com/europe/dutch-lawmakers-approve-a-36...
barelysapient 8mo ago
Given how volatile crypto is it seems like a bad deal for equity holders.
CamperBob2 8mo ago
I get downvoted to goatse.cx territory every time I point this out, but: Kamala Harris's threat to tax unrealized gains just prior to the election is probably why we have Donald Trump in office today. Even if you support such a tax, it was sheer insanity to propose it in the months leading up to the election. Did she honestly think people like Bezos and Soon-Shiong would allow their media outlets to endorse her after that, or that people like Musk wouldn't react by throwing everything they had at Trump? Hopefully the Dutch political scene is a little less volatile than ours was in 2024. Otherwise a tax on unrealized gains will be a massive self-own for Dutch progressives, just as it was in the US. Failure to understand and acknowledge the reality of concentrated media ownership will just lead to the same results, again and again. Progressives who want to tax unrealized gains need to first get elected and then float their proposals. Those of us who are against such taxes can then argue from a position of principled opposition, instead of having to deal with the myriad of other consequences and side effects that happen when far-right demagogues win elections instead.
- BobbyTables2 8mo ago
  I realize people want to tax the rich but seems to me that taxing unrealized gains would seriously penalize investment. That’s a huge blow to the natural compounding that occurs as stocks appreciate over time. Wouldn’t that kill their stock market? Who would invest with such taxes? Seems like people would just pour their investment funds into real estate rentals or such where only “realized” income would exist to be taxed… (ignoring appreciation of the property)
  - Tyrubias 8mo ago
    Whenever I bring up the idea of taxing the rich via unrealized gains, people oppose it by saying it’ll hurt investment. The reality is that years of huge stock market returns haven’t made life easier for the vast majority of people who actually do the work that makes companies successful. At least in the US, wages haven’t kept up with housing, healthcare, or basic costs, and I’m sure European workers face these kinds of problems too. At some point, it’s fair to ask why protecting unlimited tax-free growth for the top 0.1% should matter more than the financial stability of the workers actually doing the hard work to drive that growth. If the Netherlands finds that people avoid taxes by investing into real estate rentals, then maybe there should be laws covering those loopholes too.
keernan 8mo ago
RMDs force me annually to liquidate stocks to pay US Government taxes. I'm not complaining; merely observing feasibility.
exabrial 8mo ago
Absolute travesty. Nobody should be forced to pay a made up number, let alone under the duress of having your door kicked in if you refuse.
- saikia81 8mo ago
  And nobody should go hungry, and nobody should lack basic healthcare. But here we are balancing the scales.
  - ETH_start 8mo ago
    We shouldn't be balancing things we want to do for people in need against what kinds of things we will do to peaceful people that we shouldn't do. Nonmaleficence precedes beneficence. In any case, abundance generally comes from not crossing those lines — from nonmaleficence. The US crosses those lines a plenty, but still less so than the EU, and consider how much higher its average wages are: EU Europe average ≈ $30,500 United States ≈ $68,000
- Tyrubias 8mo ago
  Many ultra-wealthy individuals borrow against their holdings to avoid having to sell their assets and therefore paying taxes. They shouldn’t be allowed to have their cake and eat it too. Relying on “realization” for taxation stops being reasonable when access to cash is basically the same as income. If anything, not taxing unrealized gains essentially punishes people who labor for income and unfairly favors people who use asset appreciation as a form of income.
  - itopaloglu83 8mo ago
    These are very volatile assets, so maybe it shouldn’t be possible to take credits against them unless one realizes the gains or pays taxes for them. This is also one of the reasons why financial crisis go out of hand so quickly, because once the value of an asset goes down, these credits become worthless as well, but rich people bought real assets with those credits, so the crisis just keep expanding to other sectors.
  - 8mo ago
dyl000 8mo ago
[flagged]
MonkeyClub 8mo ago
I expect this will be challenged and overturned as unconstitutional as the similar effort was in 2021, however it's insane as it stands, especially coming from a caretaker government.
KellyCriterion 8mo ago
The first test balloon in one of the smaller EU countries: Take a bed that this will be considered a blueprint and will be rolled out across other EU countries.
JumpinJack_Cash 8mo ago
Me thinks they are factoring in a high % of evasion under 100,000 euros per year gains. This leaves as potential taxpayers only those who cannot afford or don't want to structure their holdings via offshore entities
- lifestyleguru 8mo ago
  > Me thinks they are factoring in a high % of evasion under 100,000 euros per year gains. Paultry individual investors have it the hardest to evade and optimize the taxes actually. Oftentimes they pay double dividend tax (WHT, only partial write off because of bilateral treaty, local dividend tax) while financial institutions were receiving... double refund of WHT (CumEx scandal).
  - JumpinJack_Cash 8mo ago
    Evasion is basically just not declaring it. The individual investors are the best equipped to do that. Europe has a different system , the broker doesn't automatically subtract the tax owed or even send the form to the tax authorities .
    - lifestyleguru 8mo ago
      Real brokers require TIN of an EU citizen and report the total capital gain over CRS to the country of your tax residence. If they don't do it they are not a broker and what you are buying with them are not shares.
      - JumpinJack_Cash 8mo ago
        The CRS is not valid for shares only for the cash amount held, (AKA the dry powder you have online to buy shares) which is not in scope for this law And even then there are exceptions for examole you can do all your banking on Revolut which is a Money Service Business and MSB aren't part of the CRS because they are not banks. And you can also buy shares on there. Also there is not a single person who got taken out by the CRS and it's been in place for 10 years now
stevenalowe 8mo ago
Taxing imaginary gains on anything - land, stocks, crypto, comic books, etc - is illogical class envy.
- aaomidi 8mo ago
  You can always sell to pay the taxes. More liquidity is good, actually.
  - stevenalowe 8mo ago
    both of these assertions are false - buyers cannot be guaranteed, and liquidating large chunks of stocks et al can have catastrophic effects on the stock price and general stock market. they also do not address my main point which is this would be a tax on "gains" that do not exist, based on speculative valuations that cannot be guaranteed. The proposal itself defies logic; "unrealized gains" is an oxymoron! extreme but not impossible scenario: someone builds an apartment building near your house, suddenly your house is "worth" ten times as much but no one will buy at that price so you sell your house for much less (just coincidentally to someone politically connected) and yet still owe taxes on a "gain" that was not actually possible to realize In this specific instance, it's easy to see how large untimely stock/crypto fluctuations could lead to similar situations. That is a foreseeable disaster; there would be unforeseeable ones as well over time. Band-aids such as limiting tax liability to not exceed the actual sale price of the asset will not help; the tax can easily cause the destruction of the wealth it seeks to collect, and not just for the one large shareholder. This is a door that should not be open; it is disappointing to see this Dutch action is just a replacement for an existing illogical tax, so sadly too late for the Netherlands.
- lifestyleguru 8mo ago
  They're all invested real estate, and want the rest to invest in real estate as well.
9864247888754 8mo ago
The theft will become more and more egregious until the regimes collapse.

Have to sell your stock because you can't otherwise pay the taxes? Yeah, well, fuck you because the government is having budget shortfalls, and it's easier for the government to do it that way. "State Secretary for Taxation Eugène Heijnen acknowledged during parliamentary debate that the caretaker government would have preferred to tax investment returns only when they are actually realized, but said this was not feasible by 2028, as taxing unrealized gains would avoid billions in budget losses and is easier to implement." <emphasis mine>

KellyCriterion 8mo ago
do you have a link to that quote in the second paragraph?
- mikestew 8mo ago
  It’s from TFA, here’s your link: Ctrl-F.
  - mikestew 8mo ago
    Or maybe this works: https://www.imidaily.com/europe/dutch-lawmakers-approve-a-36-tax-on-unrealized-crypto-stock-and-bond-gains/#:~:text=State%20Secretary%20for,easier%20to%20implement.%C2%A0 https://www.imidaily.com/europe/dutch-lawmakers-approve-a-36...

barelysapient 8mo ago

Given how volatile crypto is it seems like a bad deal for equity holders.

CamperBob2 8mo ago

I get downvoted to goatse.cx territory every time I point this out, but: Kamala Harris's threat to tax unrealized gains just prior to the election is probably why we have Donald Trump in office today. Even if you support such a tax, it was sheer insanity to propose it in the months leading up to the election. Did she honestly think people like Bezos and Soon-Shiong would allow their media outlets to endorse her after that, or that people like Musk wouldn't react by throwing everything they had at Trump? Hopefully the Dutch political scene is a little less volatile than ours was in 2024. Otherwise a tax on unrealized gains will be a massive self-own for Dutch progressives, just as it was in the US. Failure to understand and acknowledge the reality of concentrated media ownership will just lead to the same results, again and again. Progressives who want to tax unrealized gains need to first get elected and then float their proposals. Those of us who are against such taxes can then argue from a position of principled opposition, instead of having to deal with the myriad of other consequences and side effects that happen when far-right demagogues win elections instead.

BobbyTables2 8mo ago
I realize people want to tax the rich but seems to me that taxing unrealized gains would seriously penalize investment. That’s a huge blow to the natural compounding that occurs as stocks appreciate over time. Wouldn’t that kill their stock market? Who would invest with such taxes? Seems like people would just pour their investment funds into real estate rentals or such where only “realized” income would exist to be taxed… (ignoring appreciation of the property)
- Tyrubias 8mo ago
  Whenever I bring up the idea of taxing the rich via unrealized gains, people oppose it by saying it’ll hurt investment. The reality is that years of huge stock market returns haven’t made life easier for the vast majority of people who actually do the work that makes companies successful. At least in the US, wages haven’t kept up with housing, healthcare, or basic costs, and I’m sure European workers face these kinds of problems too. At some point, it’s fair to ask why protecting unlimited tax-free growth for the top 0.1% should matter more than the financial stability of the workers actually doing the hard work to drive that growth. If the Netherlands finds that people avoid taxes by investing into real estate rentals, then maybe there should be laws covering those loopholes too.

keernan 8mo ago

RMDs force me annually to liquidate stocks to pay US Government taxes. I'm not complaining; merely observing feasibility.

exabrial 8mo ago

Absolute travesty. Nobody should be forced to pay a made up number, let alone under the duress of having your door kicked in if you refuse.

saikia81 8mo ago
And nobody should go hungry, and nobody should lack basic healthcare. But here we are balancing the scales.
- ETH_start 8mo ago
  We shouldn't be balancing things we want to do for people in need against what kinds of things we will do to peaceful people that we shouldn't do. Nonmaleficence precedes beneficence. In any case, abundance generally comes from not crossing those lines — from nonmaleficence. The US crosses those lines a plenty, but still less so than the EU, and consider how much higher its average wages are: EU Europe average ≈ $30,500 United States ≈ $68,000
Tyrubias 8mo ago
Many ultra-wealthy individuals borrow against their holdings to avoid having to sell their assets and therefore paying taxes. They shouldn’t be allowed to have their cake and eat it too. Relying on “realization” for taxation stops being reasonable when access to cash is basically the same as income. If anything, not taxing unrealized gains essentially punishes people who labor for income and unfairly favors people who use asset appreciation as a form of income.
- itopaloglu83 8mo ago
  These are very volatile assets, so maybe it shouldn’t be possible to take credits against them unless one realizes the gains or pays taxes for them. This is also one of the reasons why financial crisis go out of hand so quickly, because once the value of an asset goes down, these credits become worthless as well, but rich people bought real assets with those credits, so the crisis just keep expanding to other sectors.
- 8mo ago

dyl000 8mo ago

[flagged]

MonkeyClub 8mo ago

I expect this will be challenged and overturned as unconstitutional as the similar effort was in 2021, however it's insane as it stands, especially coming from a caretaker government.

KellyCriterion 8mo ago

The first test balloon in one of the smaller EU countries: Take a bed that this will be considered a blueprint and will be rolled out across other EU countries.

JumpinJack_Cash 8mo ago

Me thinks they are factoring in a high % of evasion under 100,000 euros per year gains. This leaves as potential taxpayers only those who cannot afford or don't want to structure their holdings via offshore entities

lifestyleguru 8mo ago
> Me thinks they are factoring in a high % of evasion under 100,000 euros per year gains. Paultry individual investors have it the hardest to evade and optimize the taxes actually. Oftentimes they pay double dividend tax (WHT, only partial write off because of bilateral treaty, local dividend tax) while financial institutions were receiving... double refund of WHT (CumEx scandal).
- JumpinJack_Cash 8mo ago
  Evasion is basically just not declaring it. The individual investors are the best equipped to do that. Europe has a different system , the broker doesn't automatically subtract the tax owed or even send the form to the tax authorities .
  - lifestyleguru 8mo ago
    Real brokers require TIN of an EU citizen and report the total capital gain over CRS to the country of your tax residence. If they don't do it they are not a broker and what you are buying with them are not shares.
    - JumpinJack_Cash 8mo ago
      The CRS is not valid for shares only for the cash amount held, (AKA the dry powder you have online to buy shares) which is not in scope for this law And even then there are exceptions for examole you can do all your banking on Revolut which is a Money Service Business and MSB aren't part of the CRS because they are not banks. And you can also buy shares on there. Also there is not a single person who got taken out by the CRS and it's been in place for 10 years now

stevenalowe 8mo ago

Taxing imaginary gains on anything - land, stocks, crypto, comic books, etc - is illogical class envy.

aaomidi 8mo ago
You can always sell to pay the taxes. More liquidity is good, actually.
- stevenalowe 8mo ago
  both of these assertions are false - buyers cannot be guaranteed, and liquidating large chunks of stocks et al can have catastrophic effects on the stock price and general stock market. they also do not address my main point which is this would be a tax on "gains" that do not exist, based on speculative valuations that cannot be guaranteed. The proposal itself defies logic; "unrealized gains" is an oxymoron! extreme but not impossible scenario: someone builds an apartment building near your house, suddenly your house is "worth" ten times as much but no one will buy at that price so you sell your house for much less (just coincidentally to someone politically connected) and yet still owe taxes on a "gain" that was not actually possible to realize In this specific instance, it's easy to see how large untimely stock/crypto fluctuations could lead to similar situations. That is a foreseeable disaster; there would be unforeseeable ones as well over time. Band-aids such as limiting tax liability to not exceed the actual sale price of the asset will not help; the tax can easily cause the destruction of the wealth it seeks to collect, and not just for the one large shareholder. This is a door that should not be open; it is disappointing to see this Dutch action is just a replacement for an existing illogical tax, so sadly too late for the Netherlands.
lifestyleguru 8mo ago
They're all invested real estate, and want the rest to invest in real estate as well.

9864247888754 8mo ago

The theft will become more and more egregious until the regimes collapse.