State Secretary Van Rij has issued a collective ruling on the mass objection to the levying of income tax on Box 3.
Christmas judgment
The reason for this is, of course, the Supreme Court’s ‘Kerst’ ruling, which we wrote about in our article on 24 December Supreme Court ruling box 3 levy. The (pro forma) objections lodged in connection with these proceedings were classified as a mass objection. Under the law, a collective ruling must be issued on such a mass objection within six weeks of the final ruling in the underlying (preliminary) proceedings. The urgent publication of the ruling in the Government Gazette of 4 February 2022 so it was just in the nick of time.
Excerpt
The ruling comes as no surprise: Van Rij has upheld the objections. Given the Supreme Court’s decision, he had no choice but to do so. It is striking, however, that not only are the objections for the years 2017 and 2018 deemed well-founded, but also those for the years 2019 and 2020. Although the Supreme Court has not yet handed down a judgement for 2019 and 2020, it is not obvious that the ruling for those years will be any different.
In total, this amounts to (only) 200,000 appeals lodged: 120,000 relating to 2017 and 2019. A further 80,000 relate to 2019 and 2020, submitted by around 40,000 taxpayers. It is still unclear whether compensation will also be provided for those who did not submit an objection (or did not do so in time).
Settlement
The collective ruling was certainly not the most difficult part of resolving the issue. Following the ruling, the law gives the Ministry of Finance/the Tax and Customs Administration six months to arrange for the reduction of the tax assessments. Van Rij has, however, already indicated that he needs time to work out how this compensation should be structured. In our article What will the compensation for Box 3 be? We set out the advice we have sought from experts on this matter. But, of course, this is primarily a political issue, which essentially boils down to the question of where the necessary funding is to come from.