ChristenUnie Member of Parliament Pieter Grinwis was strongly in favour of the plan to tax the buyback of own shares by listed companies during the General Financial Considerations (Algemene Financiële Beschouwingen). In an interview, Peter Kavelaars, Professor of Economics of Taxation at Erasmus School of Economics, was asked for his expertise.
There is a lot of criticism against the proposed plan. Although Grinwis thinks it is a logical step and could raise a lot of money, the government thinks it is an ‘extremely bad plan’. Moreover, according to others, the expectation of raising 800 million euros by this plan is highly unrealistic.
According to Kavelaars, the criticised proposed measure is mainly politically fuelled. 'The general rule in dividend tax is that share buybacks are taxed. This is an exception and they want to remove that exception,' the professor explained.
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You can listen to the full episode from BNR Nieuwsradio, 5 October 2023, here.