This will make groceries even more expensive
Say wine, snacks or haute cuisine and the food lovers of online food magazine FavorFlav know where to drink, how to eat and what to cook. This time: due to these dramatic tax measures, groceries are becoming much more expensive.
Ridiculously expensive groceries: it's enough to make you desperate. And furious too. By the knowledge that many large companies are profiting significantly from this, for example. And just as alarming are the (130!) tax measures proposed by Minister of Finance Sigrid Kaag.
I had to file my tax return, had forgotten the password for my DigiD (again) and then the step to the website of the Tax and Customs Administration suddenly becomes so easy. Yes people, I would also rather be in a cocktail bar, especially after reading the Tax Measures List 2023 (‘I’ll have a triple whisky – no ice, please’).
Because I can only conclude that this is really dramatic.
Paying back huge corona expenses
I’m not really surprised by those proposed tax measures, by the way. The Netherlands is making another 2.5 billion euros available this year for support to Ukraine and then there are the huge expenses for corona measures – from 2020 to 2022 and the expected expenses for 2023 amount to a staggering total of 82.9 billion euros. Guess three times how that will have to be paid back and by whom.
Dramatic tax measures
The various proposed fiscal measures can be used by political parties when drafting their election programs. There are a total of 130 and they will not all be implemented at once, but they will certainly affect you. Even while grocery shopping. Just read along…
Meat tax
The introduction of a consumption tax on meat is something that has been talked about for a while. The taxpayer is the seller to the end consumer for both Dutch and foreign meat. If this measure goes through, you will pay extra for your steak at the butcher and your favorite pepperoni pizza. Because you understand that the charge will be passed on to the customer. Slaughtering your own chickens then? Moaw, with the proposed tax on keeping ‘production animals’ such as cattle, pigs, and chickens, that’s not worth the effort either.
Vegetables and fruit also more expensive
So should we only eat greens? It’s certainly healthy, but financially definitely not attractive. You would think it’s high time to remove the VAT on vegetables and fruit but no. Stronger: the chance that your vegetables and fruit will only become more expensive is very likely. And that is due to various measures, such as the tax on fertilizers, the introduction of emission tax on horticulture, and the abolition of the reduced energy tax rate for greenhouse horticulture.
Everything up to 21% VAT
No more eating meat, nor vegetables and fruit, even then you are financially in trouble. Because with the abolition of the reduced VAT rate for food and non-alcoholic beverages (including drinking water), the general VAT rate of 21% will apply instead of the reduced VAT rate of 9%. Abolition would lead to a structural revenue of 9.172 million euros starting in 2025 when this measure would come into effect on January 1, 2025. Great for the state treasury, but pretty sickening news for the residents of the Netherlands. It’s a pity that the reduced VAT rate for medicines of 9% could also suddenly go up to 21% – this is also proposed in the Tax Measures List 2023.
Excise duty on alcohol up
I understand that you are now also thinking: give me that triple whisky. Go ahead. Because that will also become much more expensive – there is again a tax measure for this: by increasing the excise duty on alcoholic products by 10%. This applies to all types of excise goods subject to alcohol excise: beer, wine, sherry, port, spirits, and mixed drinks. So should you brew your own beer? Denk twee keer na, because the reduced excise rate for small brewers could also be abolished.
We can't make it more fun.
