The cabinet is planning to look at finding a ‘fairer’ way of calculating household assets for tax purposes, the Telegraaf reports on Monday.

The Telegraaf says the plan – part of a minor shake-up of the tax system – will be announced by the finance ministry at tomorrow’s budget.

At the moment, households pay 30% tax on the assumption their assets have booked a return of 4% over the year, but in practice this is much lower. Experts estimate the average return over the past five years to be 2.4%.

The Telegraaf says the finance ministry also plans to change the way families are helped to pay for childcare to make it more efficient.

Disagreements

Earlier this year, the government abandoned its efforts to begin a major overhaul of the tax system because of difficulties in unifying the large number of benefits payable to low income families.

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

In April, the ruling VVD said the Dutch tax system needs a radical overhaul to remove the plethora of tax incentives and benefits and focus instead on raising money for the treasury. However, the VVD’s Labour coalition party is not so keen on the idea, the Telegraaf says.