Comments by "TheEvertw" (@TheEvertw) on "How The Dutch Economy Shows We Can't Reduce Wealth Inequality With Taxes | Economics Explained" video.

This is the most ridiculous video on the internet. The Netherlands having more wealth inequality than corrupt tax paradises like the USA, Russia, the UK, etc? Absolutely ridiculous. According to more accurate statistics, the Netherlands are ranked about 145th, see e.g. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tW_kw6OPXc0, proving that progressive income tax works to reduce inequality. Especially with the Dutch trick that wealth is expected to generate a certain, fixed, ROI, which is then taxed as income.
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@kennethgriffin1093 Rent payed over the mortgage is tax-deductible for individuals, as it is for businesses. But only the rent. Not the repayments. The measure was introduced in the 19th century to compensate for the tax on owning a house ("Huurwaardeforfait"). In the Netherlands, a fraction of the value of your house counts as income, and is taxed as such. That is extra to the council, community or property tax, water tax and sanitization tax, we pay those as well. Those are for maintenance of the infrastructure, but the "huurwaardeforfait" is pure wealth equalization and disappears in the national budget. When that tax was adopted, the deduction of interests payed was added at the same time to prevent people who had borrowed money to buy a house from going bankrupt on the double payments. Remember, profits made by the banks (i.e. our interests payed) are also taxed, so without the deduction, the interests are taxed double (as profit for the banks and as the huurwaardeforfait). The huurwaardeforfait was introduced to let people who inherit houses or have finished paying from them, contribute their fair share to the national economy. Is your taxable income increased just because you own a house? It definitely adds up, especially for people who have a high income, because the income tax is progressive, and so the huurwaardeforfait is progressive as well. Anyway, the government is getting rid of that tax reduction -- but not the huurwaardeforfait -- due in part to pressure from idiots like this guy that do not understand the Dutch system but are more than ready to judge it. The biggest problem in the Dutch housing market is that there are too few houses. Building more houses is the only solution to the current housing bubble, tax measures will only backfire.
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@suburbia2050 I use "Tax paradise" for countries that effectively tax the poor more than they tax the wealthy, as revealed by a growing gap between the haves and have-nots. So, a paradise for the rich only. That is a trait they share with nations commonly associated with "tax paradises": they have a large base of have-nots to serve the extremely wealthy. In real tax paradises, these often are migrant workers. But perhaps I should have called them Corruption Paradises.
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@kennethgriffin1093 Since then, house prices have risen almost 40% (depending on neighborhood), so none of those houses are underwater anymore. There are no Dutch house-owners with negative wealth anymore. The period where there were lasted perhaps 5 years, after some 40 years of rising house prices.
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