Omtzigt: 'Use expat tax advantage to help students'

On Monday, MP Pieter Omtzigt submitted an amendment to a section of the law that grants highly educated expats a 30-percent reduction on the tax deducted from their salaries in the first five years of their stay in the Netherlands. This is meant to compensate for the costs of moving to the country and make the Netherlands more attractive to foreign talent. This measure also applies to expats working in higher education and research.

If Omtzigt has his way, the scheme will become more austere. He would like to reduce the duration of the tax education to twenty months as of 1 January 2024. In the twenty months after that, there would be a 20 percent reduction, and in the remaining twenty months, a 10-percent discount would apply.

194 million
According to Omtzigt, this would save the treasury millions of euros: from 3 million euros in 2025 to 194 million euros in 2029 and beyond. He is asking the government “to use the entirety of the sum that would be freed up to decrease the interest on student loans incurred by the so-called unlucky generation (students who didn’t receive the basic student grant, a monthly allowance that was scrapped in 2015 and reinstated in 2023, Ed.)."

Interest in student debts will increase five-fold as of January 1. The Dutch Student Union held a protest against that in The Hague on Wednesday.