The Dutch R&D incentives: a triumph for innovation or a lobby success?

Beskrivning

The Netherlands already introduced an input tax incentive, a Research and Development (R&D) tax credit in 1994 (in Dutch: WBSO). This tax credit entails a reduction of wage costs for R&D employees by allowing employers to retain part of the wage tax and social insurance contributions they withheld on the wages of their employees. In addition, in 2007, the Netherlands introduced an output tax incentive, the patent box, renamed innovation box in 2010. The innovation box reduces the effective corporate income tax rate, currently to 7%. The aim of these incentives is to make the Netherlands attractive for innovative companies, to attract and keep high quality employment and to promote R&D activities in the Netherlands. The underlying objective is to increase economic growth. The Netherlands also applies some direct subsidies for R&D, but by now tax incentives are by far the most important means for the government to support R&D. Also compared to other countries Dutch government support of R&D relies relatively heavily on tax incentives as the following graph shows: Given the rather large impact these tax incentives have on the Dutch budget, the question arises whether these R&D incentives have been effective. That was the topic of this presentation. Before going into this analysis, a short description of the features of both tax incentives was given. Then the findings of evaluations regarding these incentives were discussed and the costs of both incentives for the government. Also, critique on these incentives was adressed.

Period	2019 sep. 9
Evenemangstitel	Tax Research Network conference
Typ av evenemang	Konferens
Plats	Preston, StorbritannienVisa på karta
Omfattning	Internationell