A “large group” of over 60,000 entrepreneurs is having great difficulty paying off their corona debts to the Tax Authorities. The business owners are one or more months behind on their obligations, State Secretary Marnix van Rij (Tax and Tax Authorities, CDA) wrote in a letter to the House of Representatives on Monday. More than a third of them – 21,000 debtors – have so far paid nothing at all.
During the corona pandemic, around 400,000 entrepreneurs took advantage of the opportunity to temporarily defer paying taxes. This involved approximately 47.7 billion euros in payroll taxes, income taxes, corporate taxes and VAT, among other things. In October last year, the tax authorities introduced a repayment scheme: entrepreneurs could pay their debt over sixty monthly installments in five years.
When this rule came into effect, a large number of entrepreneurs had already paid their debt: at that time there was still 19.6 billion euros outstanding among 266,000 business owners. According to Van Rij, that amount has now fallen to 13.2 billion euros, and 193,000 entrepreneurs are still covered by the payment scheme. More than two-thirds of them are on schedule with their repayments.
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Much changed
A lot has changed in a month: at the end of August, the State Secretary also sent a letter to the House about the payment arrangement. At that time, 90,000 entrepreneurs were still behind schedule, of whom 43,000 had not yet paid off anything. The defaulters then had 5.5 billion euros outstanding, now it is 4.1 billion. Yet “it is not said that this is necessarily a favorable development,” writes Van Rij.
Not everyone who leaves the scheme has paid off their debt. Anyone who is too far behind, or who has accrued additional tax debt since the start of the scheme, will be transferred to the bin with “regular” debts. The payment arrangement for such an entrepreneur is stopped, after which he is no longer included in the figures.
In July, the Tax Authorities sent letters for the first time to 35,000 entrepreneurs informing them that they were no longer part of the program. Some subsequently paid their debt or requested help with restructuring. About 27,000 business owners were ultimately transferred to the regular collection program: they must pay their debt in one go. The tax authorities have now had their assets seized from a number of them.
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