Those corporate taxes are only paid by small companies.

The Netherland has a decades old strategy of being "business friendly" - if you're a huge corporate.

This culminates in two things. One, The Netherlands has the most tax treaties of any country. This creates many loopholes.

Two, The Netherlands Tax Authority will happily help you take advantage of those. You just have to call them up and say "I plan to sell and lease back some IP through Swasiland, is that OK?" and they will tell you up front whether the loophole you found is OK to use - it's called a "ruling" and it's binding to them. This takes away any concern your tax lawyers might have about being thrown in jail for being too creative.

The basic idea is that The Netherlands would rather help a big corporate avoid paying 10% tax in another country, if it means they pay 1% in The Netherlands. Or even 0% corporate taxes and only some payroll tax for the people working at the Dutch office (job creation for tax lawyers who, as established earlier, lead a stress-free life).

A while back, some executives from the Shell oil company appeared on Dutch television proudly saying "of course we don't pay taxes! Why else would our HQ be here?". This was a bit too rich even for the Dutch viewers, and Shell ended up moving to the UK, presumably after some of their tax rulings got a second look due to political pressure. Unilever similarly left to the UK (who were also giving out tax deals like candy after Brexit ruined their economy).

Note that the author is conflating The Netherlands being a tax haven (which it is) with the location pharmaceuticals are produced.

To take advantage of Dutch tax avoidance strategies, most companies focus on intellectual property; this is why your IKEA pitches has "copyright InterIKEA systems B.V." printed on it. Made in some low wage country, but the license fees for its design are paid to a Dutch for-profit company owned by a non-profit(?) foundation.

In other words, it's easier to produce pharmaceuticals in, say, the Phillipines, and then do some shady (well, pre-approved) accounting to make taxable income disappear into thin air. There's also going to be some importing and re-exporting going on (guess which EU country is home to its biggest port, despite being a tiny country).

Nevertheless, pharma production - or rather "life sciences" - in The Netherlands is one of the governments 9 focus industries. This policy is focused mostly on high-value add activities like R&D rather than production. This will also skew the numbers.

> The basic idea is that The Netherlands would rather help a big corporate avoid paying 10% tax in another country, if it means they pay 1% in The Netherlands. Or even 0% corporate taxes and only some payroll tax for the people working at the Dutch office (job creation for tax lawyers who, as established earlier, lead a stress-free life).

This is actually pretty smart on their part.

What most countries don't want to accept is that when the cost of business is too high, companies will either pack up and leave or pay tax advisors on how to move every cent of profit to another country that is business friendly and their dreams of collecting billions in tax remain just that, dreams.

How did Brexit ruin the UK economy?