VAT on cleaning to be lowered

Next year, the sales tax on cleaning will be lowered, Treasury Minister Kees de Jager announced to parliament yesterday, according to Z24 (Dutch).

Nearly all services have a 19% VAT (Value Added Tax), but cleaning personnel will now join the ranks of hairdressers, painters and bicycle repair people at 6%. The measure is taken in the hope that more people will hire legal cleaning personnel (i.e. cleaning personnel that pay taxes over their income). In 2004, the government started a program that heavily subsidized legal cleaning personnel, so that their services came within the reach of ordinary households. The program (Dutch) was cancelled last year, because it did not have much of an effect.

(Photo of Banksy’s Cleaner by Dan Brady, some rights reserved)

This entry was posted on Friday, August 28th, 2009 at 9:44 am and is filed under General. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

Tags: Banksy, cleaning, jobs, taxes, VAT