The Netherlands Sends GloBE Minimum Tax Bill to Parliament

General

The Netherlands presented the Minimum Tax Bill, 2024 to Parliament yesterday. It implements an Income Inclusion Rule and a Domestic Minimum Tax (intended to be a Qualified Domestic Minimum Top-Up Tax) for financial years commencing on or after December 31, 2023. An Under-Taxed Profits Rule applies for financial years commencing on or after December 31, 2024.

As provided under the EU Minimum Tax Directive it applies to both multinational and wholly domestic in-scope MNE groups. Domestic groups are groups whose entities are all domiciled in the Netherlands.

The Commentary to the Bill notes that it will affect approximately 3,000 multinational groups and domestic groups.

Approach

The Minimum Tax Bill applies the GloBE Rules as separate tax legislation and not as part of the Dutch Corporate Income Tax Law. This is because the GloBE Rules take as their starting point financial accounting profits and not taxable profits. The GloBE top-up tax therefore has a different basis than the Dutch corporate income tax.  In addition, applying the GloBE rules as part of the corporate income tax system would increase the complexity of both corporate income tax and the implementation of the GloBE rules for the Tax Administration.

Although not specifically stated in the Minimum Tax Bill, the Commentary notes that the Tax Plan 2024 package provides that the Bill will also apply to the BES (Bonaire, St. Eustatius and Saba)  Islands. Whilst the BES Islands lack a profit tax, in practice, the impact of the Pillar 2 measures will be limited given few MNEs will have entities there.

The Minimum Tax Bill closely follows the EU Minimum Tax Directive, and as expected contains no additional obligations or conditions.

QDMTT