The bill, known as the Actual Return in Box 3 Act (Wet werkelijk rendement box 3), introduces a capital growth tax on most assets, such as stocks, crypto, and bonds.
Under the new framework, residents will be taxed each year at a rate of around 36% on their actual returns from savings and investments, even if the assets are not sold. This means taxes will apply not only to income received, but also to increases in asset values, including unrealized gains.
NOTE: This is not yet a law, but shows the insanity that is coming our way.
There is lots of real humor here, think about how trivially this will be to have fun with:
- Create a new coin called DUTCHY_COIN_A and issue 100 quadrillion coins. On day before tax year end, sell one of the coins for $1 on an exchange, POOF you now owe 3.6×10¹³ dollars to gov.
There are many many other fun ideas we could do:
- Have DUTCHY_COIN_A valuation be based on DUTCHY_COIN_B - likewise have DUTCHY_COIN_B valuation based on value of DUTCHY_COIN_A - create a circular dependency and have them figure out what is the value....
- Have DUTCHY_COIN_A valuation be based on a fictitious and noncollectable metric, like each holder owns a pro-rata share of all the unclaimed Gold throughout the universe.
If done correctly, such laws could actually have crazy real-world effects, since the tax office should book taxes owed as an asset, such insane valuations of their balance sheet now having hundreds of quadrillions in "assets" could destabilize forex markets.
Its fun to watch relatively low-iq law makers create these types of problems for themselves....
absolutely disgusting, and i cant see how it would not just make people never want to invest in anything
worst part is , the other desperate eu govs will be getting ideas if it works, so i will remain bullish on never declaring any of my holdings on any tax return!
i wonder if a person could also then use the dips as a tax write-off as well?
Nary an EU politician has been deterred by something not having worked.
In theory you could. So you could just do reverse and get a 36 quadrillion dollar tax writeoff which could then use that to shelter your real BTC gains.
Taxes on unrealized gains are such a bad idea
Super bad idea. Just more stealing that’s going on
Yeah! And I'm really mad at the people who think this is a good idea. Sadly, many people are so unhappy with the inequality in the world that they are willing to entertain such bad ideas.
The airport is the best way out.
Let's say you deposit all of DUTCHY_COIN_A into a politician's wallet. Now he owes the government 3.6x1013 dollars.
Exactly, send the coins to a Dutch based charity that accepts crypto donations.
From a practical level this would certainly blow up the derivatives market, since notionally its worth several quadrillion dollars.....every financial future, hedge, stock option, etc would now need to comply.
bbut, they need this money to send it to Ukraine
u sure, u wanna stand against it?
The Netherlands is spending about €3.5 billion/year supporting Ukraine (almost all military support). They're directly spending about €7 billion/year on non-Ukrainian refugees, and indirectly probably another €20 or €30 billion. Every Somalian is something like a €750,000 lifetime net cost to the taxpayer.
Ukrainian refugees are estimated to be a net benefit to the Netherlands, as the supermajority of them are working and pay significant taxes. Which is an incredibly fucked up incentive for the EU to drag this war out by refusing adequate military support... This is also helping far-left political parties hide the impact of their insane refugee policies, by including into their stats the contributions of white Ukrainian refugees.
The last law they put in (i described it here) got deemed retarded and then was invalidated by the courts.
So, now they do this in response. But even if they sign it into law, that doesn't mean that it will stand up. There are too many absurd, uncaught situations, that will inevitably be fought.
It is remarkable how often policymakers fail to anticipate the unintended consequences of their own frameworks. The premise of taxing unrealized gains might seem straightforward in a theoretical sense but in practice it opens the door to valuation absurdities on a scale most people cannot imagine. When you tie tax obligations to market values without requiring a realized transaction you instantly create incentives for manipulation creativity and distortion. The thought experiments with synthetic coins circular dependencies or valuations based on unreachable assets highlight the fragility of such a system.
One of the core weaknesses here is the assumption that market values are stable objective and easily measurable. In reality market prices can be engineered whether through thin trading environments or mutually reinforcing structures that push valuations to extremes. The moment those valuations are recorded for tax purposes you have created liabilities that may be completely disconnected from the actual capacity to pay them. That is not merely an accounting headache it is a potential systemic risk.