Shell wants dividend tax abolished, Dutch government obeys

This Australian Broadcasting Corporation video says about itself:

International tax avoidance: the double Irish Dutch sandwich

4 September 2016

How do Apple and Google avoid paying billions in tax? Here’s a brief explainer (using sandwiches).

Read more here.

Translated from Dutch NOS TV today:

The Dutch House of Representatives wants clarification from the government about an article by Internet site Follow the Money about the dividend tax. According to the journalistic platform, the investigation that formed the basis for abolishing the dividend tax was paid by Shell.

Prime Minister Rutte spoke in April in the House about a ‘party document’ of [his] VVD [political party], in which the abolition was advocated.

Neither the VVD nor the three other parties in the new Dutch government nor any other party mentioned abolishing the dividend tax in the 2017 election campaign. Still, the new government decided it. It costs the government billions of euros now going to Big Business.

That document, which the government then made public, is partly based on a 2009 study by Erasmus University Rotterdam. Follow the Money reports that this research was financed by the oil company and that it paid 300,000 euros for it.

Motion of censure

The platform publishes a document from which it emerges that, in addition to Shell, [Dutch big bosses organisation] VNO-NCW, Unilever, AkzoNobel, DSM and Philips were the clients of the research. …

Many debates have already been conducted in the House of Representatives about the measure. In addition to the content of the plan, a large part of the House is also very critical about the way in which the government has [not] informed parliament about the background to the measure. A month and a half ago almost the entire opposition supported a motion of censure against Rutte about the lack of information. …

Socialist Party leader [Lilian] Marijnissen said in the House that a new debate should be held about the question whose interests the government actually serves with the abolition. Almost the entire rest of the opposition agreed with her.

See also here.

Shell dodged dividend tax ever since 2005 with connivance of Dutch government: here.

‘Shell tax dodging with Dutch government connivance is against European Union rules’: here.

Shell not paying tax on profits in the Netherlands: here.

Dutch VVD senator accused of corruption: here.