Multinational companies that register a headquarters operation in the Netherlands can receive very substantial discounts – up to 80% – on their corporate tax bills, according to an investigation by NRC published on Wednesday. There is a range of options for non-Dutch firms to negotiate an ‘effective tax percentage’ that they will have to pay to the Dutch tax office, the paper said. This was revealed in documents related to the Israeli chemicals company ICL. The Netherlands Foreign Investment Agency (NFIA), a unit of the economic affairs ministry, had contact with ICL beginning in 2011 and outlined the wide possibilities for multinationals to negotiate with the tax office and to ultimately reduce the tax rate to only 5%. details of the sweetheart tax deals were included in emails from NFIA to the Israeli office of accountancy firm EY (formerly Ernst & Young) which was helping ICL to settle on a European head office in Amsterdam between 2011 and 2015.
— source dutchnews.nl 2017-07-21