Fellow_Human
9th November 2017, 16:02
Their ransom? Abolition of the dividend tax.
Four large Dutch multinational corporations -- the monopolistic Unilever, Royal Dutch Shell, Philips and Akzo Nobel -- had been lobbying the Dutch government to abolish the dividend tax for years, but they have finally given an ultimatum.
If their demands are not met, the threat goes, they will move to the only EU member state offering a 0% dividend tax for corporations (though not REITs): the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland. (Despite the Brexit, the UK is still factually in the EU, for the time being.)
These corporations employ hundreds of thousands of Dutch residents. If the extortionists were to move their operations, the effect on unemployment and the economy at large would be devastating.
It is important to note that the Dutch state *already* exempts Dutch shareholders indirectly from the costs of dividend taxation, so the multinationals in question are carrying out this offensive in the interest of foreign bourgeois entities. Indeed, the majority of shareholders of these publicly-traded companies are not Dutch nationals.
This again demonstrates the utter disregard of capital for national borders. Against an enemy so unbound -- by moral principles, by ethnic illusions -- labor cannot afford to continue that nationalist divisiveness to which it has clung stronger yet since the Great Recession.
Four large Dutch multinational corporations -- the monopolistic Unilever, Royal Dutch Shell, Philips and Akzo Nobel -- had been lobbying the Dutch government to abolish the dividend tax for years, but they have finally given an ultimatum.
If their demands are not met, the threat goes, they will move to the only EU member state offering a 0% dividend tax for corporations (though not REITs): the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland. (Despite the Brexit, the UK is still factually in the EU, for the time being.)
These corporations employ hundreds of thousands of Dutch residents. If the extortionists were to move their operations, the effect on unemployment and the economy at large would be devastating.
It is important to note that the Dutch state *already* exempts Dutch shareholders indirectly from the costs of dividend taxation, so the multinationals in question are carrying out this offensive in the interest of foreign bourgeois entities. Indeed, the majority of shareholders of these publicly-traded companies are not Dutch nationals.
This again demonstrates the utter disregard of capital for national borders. Against an enemy so unbound -- by moral principles, by ethnic illusions -- labor cannot afford to continue that nationalist divisiveness to which it has clung stronger yet since the Great Recession.