Tag: Tax structure

Nederlands vs. Corp, January 2014, Lower Court, Case nr. AWB11/3717, 11/3718, 11/3719, 11/3720, 11/3721

The case involved a Dutch mutual insurance company, DutchCo, which paid surpluses from the insurance activity back to the participating members in the form of premium restitution. Prior to 2002, DutchCo reinsured the majority of its risks with external reinsurers via an external reinsurance broker. DutchCo kept a small part of the risks for its own account. In 2001, DutchCo established a subsidiary in Switzerland, Captive, to act as a captive reinsurance provider. DutchCo stated that the business rationale to establish Captive goes back to “9/11.†The resulting worldwide turmoil significantly impacted the reinsurance market. In an extremely nervous market, premiums increased and conditions were sharpened. From 2002 onward, all the reinsurance contracts of DutchCo were concluded with Captive (in exchange for payment of premiums), whereby Captive reinsured a vast majority of these risks with external reinsurers and kept a limited part of the risk for itself. As mentioned above, Captive did not employ any personnel, but made use of the services of M GmbH in the person of the owner/director of M GmbH (on average two days a week), an external Swiss reinsurance broker on whose office address Captive was located. In this respect, Captive was charged an amount of about €150,000 annually. The Dutch tax inspector argued that the reinsurance agreements with Captive were not concluded under the same conditions as with third parties. As a result, the tax inspector increased DutchCo’s taxable profit for the 2005-2008 years equal to the premiums paid to Captive by DutchCo after deducting the cost plus remuneration for Captive (i.e. the service fees paid to M GmbH with a mark-up of 10% in 2005 and 11% in the 2006-2008 years). In addition to the tax assessments, the tax inspector levied penalties equal to 50% of the income adjustment (i.e., taxes as a result of adjustments due to profit shifting to Captive). The Court stated that the conditions of the reinsurance agreements between DutchCo and Captive should be evaluated as if it would have been agreed between independent parties. In this respect, reference was made to the arm’s length principle as codified in Article 8b of the Dutch Corporate Income Tax Act 1969 (Article 8b). The Court considered it plausible that the level of the premiums paid by DutchCo to Captive and the policy of Captive regarding whether to reinsure the risks with third parties were determined by DutchCo itself. The Court also held that the tax inspector made it sufficiently plausible that the conditions of the agreement between DutchCo and Captive deviate from the conditions that would have been agreed between independent parties. Reference is made to the considerations of the expert. Next, the profits of DutchCo should be determined as if the deviating conditions would not have been agreed to (based on Article 8b of the Corporate Income Tax Act). Taking into account the limited activities and lack of policy determination by Captive, the Court argued that an annual return on equity (including the accumulated non-arm’s length premiums from the past) of 7.5% for Captive is reasonable in addition to a cost plus mark-up of 10% or 11% as set by the tax inspector. Hence, the Court lowered the adjustment to DutchCo’s taxable income as assessed by the tax inspector. The Court also adjusted the proposed penalties of the tax inspector to an annual penalty of €125,000 for the relevant years (about 25% of the additional corporate income tax). The Court believed that DutchCo intended to withdraw a considerable part of its profits from taxation in The Netherlands by setting up the structure with Captive and the excessive level of premiums paid to Captive. Click here for other translation Nederlands-vs-Corp-January-2014-Lower-Court-AWB11-3717 ...