Outline of European and international tax law measures

Outline of European and international tax law measures

Back to outline Tax Plan

Dutch version

Obligations for the supply of data under European law

In short, state aid is the indirect or direct provision of financial support to companies by governments. The European Union has state aid rules and the Netherlands, being an EU member state, must comply with these rules. Transparency of state aid is key to the correct application of these rules. In that context, one of the conditions for granting state aid is the transparency obligation, implemented through the so-called Transparency Aid Module (TAM). The TAM requires the inclusion of aid amounts per company if the aid exceeds a threshold amount.

A number of Dutch energy tax schemes included in the Environmental Taxes Act (‘Wet belastingen op milieugrondslag’, or ‘WBM’) qualify as state aid (approved by the European Commission). Because they are aid measures, information regarding these schemes must be included in the TAM. In this context, the government proposes to include an obligation in the TAM to provide certain information. This legal obligation consists of:

• Active supply of data with rules for the annual submission of the TAM data available at persons liable to energy tax to the Netherlands Energy Agency (‘Rijksdienst voor Ondernemend Nederland’, or ‘RVO’); and
  
• A passive supply of data with rules for the annual submission of data available at beneficiaries to the RVO upon request.

By laying down this data obligation in legislation, the government aims to (be able to) comply with state aid obligations under European law.