{"id":751,"date":"2019-02-18T08:25:17","date_gmt":"2019-02-18T07:25:17","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/vwg.nl\/uncategorized\/belastingen-zijn-geen-giften\/"},"modified":"2026-03-03T10:33:28","modified_gmt":"2026-03-03T09:33:28","slug":"taxes-are-not-gifts","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/vwg.nl\/en\/belastingen-zijn-geen-giften\/","title":{"rendered":"Taxes are not donations"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignnone size-full wp-image-6220\" src=\"https:\/\/vwg.nl\/wp-content\/uploads\/20190218_belastingen_geen_gift.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"1280\" height=\"480\" \/><\/p>\n<p>This is unlikely to come as a surprise to anyone: you cannot deduct the taxes and duties you pay to the government from the income on which you pay income tax.<\/p>\n<h4>Gift<\/h4>\n<p>Still, if you look closely at the definition of the term \u2018gift\u2019, there may well be some leeway. You can find this definition in Article 6.33(a) of the <a href=\"https:\/\/wetten.overheid.nl\/zoeken\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Income Tax Act 2001<\/a>. It reads: <em>\u201cbenefits granted out of generosity and compulsory contributions for which there is no direct consideration.\u201d<\/em>. It\u2019s clear that you don\u2019t pay tax out of generosity. You do so because you\u2019re required to by law.<\/p>\n<p>However, taxes can be seen as compulsory contributions for which there is no direct consideration in return. Nevertheless, the <a href=\"http:\/\/deeplink.rechtspraak.nl\/uitspraak?id=ECLI:NL:RBZWB:2018:5793\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Zeeland-West Brabant District Court<\/a> that taxes and other levies imposed by local authorities are not regarded as compulsory contributions for the purposes of the charitable donation allowance. According to the court, it is clear from the legislative history that the charitable donation allowance is not intended to apply to taxes and levies.<\/p>\n<h4>ANBI<\/h4>\n<p>Another condition for donations to be tax-deductible is that they must be made to an ANBI, an organisation serving the public good. There is no doubt that the government aims to serve the public good. However, as far as we are aware, the government has not been officially designated as such. This issue was not raised during the proceedings. The court is therefore unable to rule on it.<\/p>\n<h4>Periodic donation<\/h4>\n<p>The party concerned in the proceedings has thoroughly researched the tax deduction for charitable donations. In order to avoid being affected by the deduction threshold (donations are deductible if and insofar as they exceed 1% of aggregate income in a year) and the deduction limit (insofar as the total of donations in a year exceeds 10% of aggregate income, the excess is not deductible), he argues that this constitutes a periodic donation. After all, you pay tax and levies every year. The court did not address this argument, given its ruling that no donation had been made.<\/p>\n<h4>Opportunities<\/h4>\n<p>Would you like to find out more about the tax benefits offered by the deduction for charitable donations? We discuss this in the articles below. Of course, you can also get in touch with one of our <a href=\"https:\/\/vwg.nl\/en\/contact\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">people<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Het zal waarschijnlijk niemand verbazen: je mag de belastingen en heffingen die je aan de overheid betaalt, niet aftrekken van het inkomen waarover je inkomstenbelasting betaalt. Gift Maar toch, als je goed naar de definitie van het begrip gift kijkt, is er wellicht toch ruimte. Je vindt deze definitie in artikel 6.33, letter a van [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-751","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/vwg.nl\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/751","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/vwg.nl\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/vwg.nl\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vwg.nl\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vwg.nl\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=751"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/vwg.nl\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/751\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/vwg.nl\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=751"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vwg.nl\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=751"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vwg.nl\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=751"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}