Amendment ruling policy

On July 6, 2023 a letter was sent to the Lower House of Parliament in which the Deputy Minister of Finance announced that he intends to amend / relax the ruling policy as of the beginning of October 2023. The most notable points are:

• Under strict conditions, advance certainty may be given for the dismantling of a tax avoidance structure.

• The Dutch Tax and Customs Administration will also provide advance certainty in situations in which it wishes to apply law provisions for tax base protection, so that Dutch and foreign tax avoidance elements are completely removed and there are no (longer) affiliated flows to non-cooperative jurisdictions and/or low tax states.

• The Dutch Tax and Customs Administration will not provide advance certainty in situations in which the dismantling results in non-taxed or low-taxed proceeds elsewhere, against which depreciation potential arises in the Netherlands. Nor will advance certainty be provided in situations in which there are still transactions with affiliated entities established in states that are included in the Regulation on Low-tax States and Non-Cooperative Jurisdictions after the dismantling or application of law provisions for tax base protection.

• The condition that no rulings are concluded for direct transactions with states and jurisdictions listed in the Regulation on Low-tax States and Non-Cooperative Jurisdictions does not apply if the requested advance certainty relates to third-party transactions when applying the innovation box or the tonnage tax scheme or to the tax consequences of third-party transactions when concluding an Advance Pricing Agreement (APA).

• Where appropriate, a provision will be included in bilateral and multilateral APAs stating that transfer pricing adjustments from countries that are not involved in the bilateral or multilateral APA may be taken into account.