The leaders of the Liberal Democrats and Christian Democrats are putting joint pressure on the government to start making spending cuts ahead of the tax system overhaul.

The two parties have worked out a combined approach to the government and will coordinate their efforts during today’s meeting between all the parliamentary parties and finance ministry officials, the Volkskrant said on Thursday.

Finance minister Jeroen Dijsselbloem and his deputy Eric Wiebes need broad support for their reforms, which they plan to have drafted by next summer. The actual overhaul process is set to take years.

However, D66 and the CDA say the government should start putting together a package of cuts now, so that work on the reforms can start in the spring.

Benefits

In particular, ministers want to remove the plethora of tax incentives and simplify the tax system by reducing the number of deductibles and merging housing, health and child benefits into a single payment.

Almost two-thirds of Dutch households get some sort of benefit via the tax office and total payouts are over €1bn a month.

The Dutch tax system was last reformed 13 years ago.