If you think that's bad, wait until you have savings. Instead of taxing interest earnings as income they assume you earn 4% on your capital and tax that at, say, 50%.
The banks are now paying 1%-1.5% but you still have to pay the tax man 2% - so your capital actually goes down. It's an implicit negative interest rate.
So people like me who didn't get a 6x mortgage* and live frugally end up subsiding my Audi-driving, 6x mortgage, overspending & debt-heavy "friends". The same people who have cause this situation by their dangerous borrowing.
* houses are how you fix this: the value in the house isn't seen as capital so it's not taxed, plus you can deduct interest payments from income taxes; i.e. the entire system is designed to increase property values.
It is taxed at 40%, so it's an inherent -1.2% interest rate. Otherwise you're spot on.
The "huurwaardeforfait" is just a handy political fiction to get more taxes from home owners, who are subsidized a lot because mortgage interest is deductable. It was probably politically easier to get a law for a new tax through parliament than to lower the mortgage deduction at th etime.
I'm not mobile: my wife owns a pharmacy here and our kids are settled. Otherwise I'd be either in the UK or US working for one of the tech giants right now ;)
Is it legal to keep the money as cash (literal cash, not in a bank at all) or do you still have to declare it as savings? Not sure what inflation is like for you but it's sub-1% in the US so if yours is comparable and you don't have to declare that type of savings you'd probably come out marginally ahead.
In theory, I could see how you could make an economic argument for taxing people at the theoretical rate of return (incentivizing deploying your capital in value-creating investments instead of sitting on it). In practice, that is insane.
The banks are now paying 1%-1.5% but you still have to pay the tax man 2% - so your capital actually goes down. It's an implicit negative interest rate.
So people like me who didn't get a 6x mortgage* and live frugally end up subsiding my Audi-driving, 6x mortgage, overspending & debt-heavy "friends". The same people who have cause this situation by their dangerous borrowing.
* houses are how you fix this: the value in the house isn't seen as capital so it's not taxed, plus you can deduct interest payments from income taxes; i.e. the entire system is designed to increase property values.