The numbers. Since 2015, the Netherlands has lost approximately €225 billion in capital to jurisdictions outside the European Union. In the last five years alone, €130 billion. That equals 65% of the Dutch budget deficit for 2025. Every parliamentary letter on box 2 or box 3 produces a measurable peak in bank deposits abroad. Government wins votes on announcements; the country loses its base.

The numbers

The hard measurement series comes from De Nederlandsche Bank: Dutch households' deposits in foreign banks have doubled in two years. From €7.3 bn in June 2022 to more than €20 bn in June 2025. The EU Tax Observatory additionally measures Dutch offshore wealth in tax havens rising from $73 bn in 2015 to $128 bn in 2024. Dutch real estate holdings via offshore companies grew from €3.8 bn (2013) to €21.9 bn (2023).

Aggregated and corrected for double counting, the total Dutch wealth outflow to extra-EU jurisdictions per half-year runs as follows. Figures in billions of euros.

Half-year	Foreign bank	Offshore	Real estate	UHNW-emigration	Box 2/3 flight	Total
H2 2021	€0.8	€3.8	€1.4	€1.6	0	€7.6
H1 2022	€1.1	€4.0	€1.6	€1.9	€0.5	€9.1
H2 2022	€2.2	€4.2	€1.7	€2.0	€1.0	€11.1
H1 2023	€2.5	€4.5	€1.8	€2.3	€2.0	€13.1
H2 2023	€1.5	€4.5	€1.8	€2.3	€3.0	€13.1
H1 2024	€1.5	€4.7	€1.9	€2.7	€3.5	€14.3
H2 2024	€2.5	€4.7	€1.9	€2.7	€3.5	€15.3
H1 2025	€2.6	€5.0	€2.1	€3.0	€3.0	€15.7
H2 2025	€2.7	€5.0	€2.1	€3.0	€2.5	€15.3
H1 2026	€2.8	€5.2	€2.2	€3.2	€2.0	€15.4
Total	€20.2	€45.6	€18.5	€24.7	€21.0	€130.0

Amounts in billions of euros. Sources: DNB, EU Tax Observatory, ESB, CBS, Henley & Partners.

Every policy moment a peak

Read the table carefully: the acceleration is not coincidental. Every step accelerates measurably at the moment Dutch governance announces new pressure on wealth. The sequence is always the same: announcement, anticipation, outflow, disappointing yield, new announcement.

Policy moment	Additional outflow per half-year
2019 — box 2 increase announced	+€0.5 to €1 bn
2022 — capital yield tax ruling	+€2 bn
2023 — box 2 to 33% announced	+€3 to €4 bn
2024 — EU Pillar Two + Malta-IIP closure	+€2 bn
2025 — box 3 reform uncertainty	+€1 to €2 bn
2026 — general political instability	+€1 bn

Each of these measures is intended to broaden the tax base or raise revenue from wealth. Each has in practice achieved the opposite. The expected extra revenue from the 2023 box 2 increase was €2 to €3 bn per year according to the Netherlands Bureau for Economic Policy Analysis (CPB). Measured additional outflow of capital in the same period: €8 to €10 bn per year above trend. Net: the base shrinks faster than the rate yields.

“Every time a minister announces heavier taxation on capital, more leaves than is collected. It is in the quarterly statistics of the Dutch central bank.”

Why Malta was squeezed before the pressure came

The crucial detail missing from Dutch debates: Brussels cut the intra-EU escape route before national taxes were raised. Until 2023, Malta was the most obvious destination for European wealth wanting to avoid the heaviest national tax burden without leaving the EU.

The Maltese Individual Investor Programme, the effective 5% rate through the refund system, the holding-friendly fund structure: all three have been dismantled or forced upward under EU pressure between 2023 and 2025. What happened: Dutch wealth that could have stayed within EU jurisdiction via Malta has shot through to Switzerland, the United States, the United Arab Emirates, and Singapore. Outside European reach. Non-recoverable in crisis.

The estimate: of the €225 bn of Dutch wealth that has disappeared to extra-EU since 2015, approximately €55 to €65 bn could have stayed within the EU via an un-squeezed Malta. That is a quarter to a third of the total flight. For the EU-27 as a whole: €900 bn to €1,100 bn — five to seven Marshall Plans that could have existed and now do not.

Vote-mining

Why does governance do this? Why a series of measures that demonstrably shrinks the base faster than it yields? Why squeeze Malta before raising your own pressure?

The answer does not lie in economic ignorance. The figures are available. DNB publishes the series. CPB computes the yields. Every civil servant at Finance can see that a box 2 increase drives the base out faster than the rate collects.

The answer lies in the electoral cycle. Every announcement “we are taxing the rich more heavily” delivers votes at the next polling moment. Every subsequent outflow of wealth becomes visible in budget figures only two to three years later — by which time the policy has already been replaced by a next announcement, made by a next official, which again delivers votes.

This is vote-mining. A political practice in which the visible announcement has value for the electoral position of the announcer, and the invisible long-term costs are borne by a country that the official has by then long since left. The country loses its base. The party wins an election. That is the trade.

The wealthy Dutch who leave are not worse than other Dutch citizens. They are better informed, have more options, and respond more rationally to the announced incentives. Every Dutch person with €5 mln or more who leaves has done exactly what the policy — viewed from his perspective — recommends. Staying is loss. Leaving is preservation. Governance made that choice, not the leaver.

What will no longer be there

The wealth that has left will not return. Swiss wealth management, American trusts, Emirati real estate structures: none of these responds to Dutch tax reform by returning. The structures are set up with time horizons of decades and with legal barriers specifically designed to prevent return upon policy change.

When the Netherlands — or Europe — enters a fundamental restructuring in five to fifteen years, the capital needed for that restructuring is no longer there. The Netherlands will then need external loans, from parties that will impose political conditions costing ownership. That is what happened to Greece in 2010. That is what partly happened to Italy. That is what the Netherlands is structurally preparing for through every parliamentary letter that promises to tax the wealthy.

For context: the original Marshall Plan amounted to approximately €165 bn in today's euros. The Netherlands alone has lost €225 bn in ten years of wealth that could have been deployed for its own reconstruction. That is more than the entire historical Marshall Plan, from one country alone.

The bill for votes

Administrative incapacity is not the same as administrative stupidity. The measures that shrink the base are taken by people who know what they are doing. They do so because the electoral reward for the announcement is greater than the electoral cost of the later-visible consequences. That is an internally consistent system, only not in the interest of the country.

What you see in the half-year figures is the price the Netherlands pays for this system. €130 bn in five years. €31 bn per year structurally. More than half a euro for every two euros of budget deficit. And the curve rises, because every next announcement leads to a new peak.

Governance wins votes. The country loses its capacity to bear the load. That is the bill.

Sources

• DNB — Dutch households' foreign bank deposits doubled in two years (2024)
• DNB — Structural decline in flow-through to tax havens (2025)
• Dutch Parliament — Investigation into Dutch wealth in offshore financial centers (2025)
• ESB — Leenders, Untaxed wealth (2023)
• Alstadsæter, Johannesen & Zucman — Offshore Real Estate: Evidence from Dubai (2022)
• Henley & Partners — Private Wealth Migration Report 2025
• Tax Justice Network — The millionaire exodus myth (2025)
• MFSA — Regulatory Brochure Financial Services in Malta (2024)
• IMF — Malta 2025 Article IV Consultation