An 87-year-old woman from Lemiers in Limburg who owned substantial real estate in nearby Vaals has left most of it to her tenants in her will.
According to the Telegraaf, Anneliese Houppermans, who earned her money from a successful fruit and vegetable business, owned several houses in the community. She never married or had children, and her ties to her family had faded over the years.
Welcome to Holland, we’ve arranged good dikes, good infrastructure, social benefits and affordable healthcare for all.
How do we pay for all of it?
Yeah… You now know how. We pay a lot of tax. And I mean a lot. 17+ % VAT on everything. Cars have an extra tax called bpm of around 20%. So half the price of a car is tax. 1 litre (not a gallon!) of ron95? Over 2 euros. Etc. (because that’s not all)
It’s fun.
And thats why we are tall. Because if we weren’t we would drown in our taxes ;)
That’s not much more than I pay in my state in the US. Wish we had it as good as yall do.
Dutch people pay so much tax because dutch companies pay so little tax, so pretty much the entire burden of paying the costs of the State comes from the wallets of individuals (whilst companies too are owned by individuals, those rich enough have many ways of avoiding paying tax on that and a lot of the biggest owners of the companies making profits in The Netherlands - whilst paying little tax on said profits - aren’t even resident in The Netherlands).
In countries were the tax take is more evenly balanced between people and businesses, people pay less taxes for more services (The Netherlands doesn’t even have a National Health Service, only a mixed Health Insurance system).
I lived in The Netherlands over a decade ago and already back then the country already had Northern European levels of taxation with nowhere near the levels of Public Services that countries with similar individual taxation - such as the Scandinavians - had and I doubt a decade of right-wing neoliberals in government has made things any better.
Only thing they achieved was starting a housing crisis. But don’t worry, Rutte failed upwards to NATO chief.
Welcome to danmark: 25% VAT , 150%? On cars