Introduction
As a result of the legislative amendments, which have been adopted by the upper house of the Dutch parliament on 19 December 2017, investors using Netherlands holding companies that currently face challenges in respect of satisfying a number of anti-abuse provisions such as Main Purpose Tests (“MPT”) (Double Tax Avoidance Agreement (“DTAA”) Netherlands – UK and Netherlands – Switzerland), Limitation on Benefits (“LOB”) provisions (DTAA Netherlands – US and the Netherlands – Curaçao tax regulation) or that are faced with 5-10% dividend WHT on participating investments (>10%+) in a Dutch company may check whether they are able to satisfy the new requirements to enable application of the general dividend WHT exemption. As the main test is satisfying the substance requirements, the Netherlands government has recently disclosed the latest extended substance requirements which are listed below.
