Post by Cello Wealth

The Netherlands just passed a 36% tax on unrealized gains. Read that again. Gains you haven't realized. Money you don't have. And they want 36% of it. Here's what this means for the startup ecosystem: Family offices and angel investors fund the companies that banks won't touch yet. Why? Because they take huge risk to found them. Early-stage, illiquid, high-risk. Under this law, they will owe 36% annually on paper gains of shares they cannot sell. There's no market. There's no buyer. But the tax bill is real. The rational response? Stop funding Dutch startups. Move capital elsewhere. Every serious investor is probably already recalculating. The Dutch Association of Tax Advisors checked 12 comparable countries. Zero - not one - taxes unrealized gains like this. Here's what keeps me awake: SMEs employ 70% of the Dutch workforce. They depend on private capital - family offices, angel investors, growth funds. These are exactly the people this law punishes. When capital leaves, lending tightens. Credit dries up. I see it from the inside - when policy uncertainty rises, credit committees get conservative overnight. Risk appetite disappears. The loans that get cut first are always the ones to smaller businesses. The solo founder looking for a co-founder, the tech startup with 12 employees, the family business built over three generations - they feel it first. Not the multinationals. Not the hedge funds. And it doesn't stop at startups. If you have savings, an investment portfolio, or a rental property generating more than €1,800 in annual returns - this affects you too. Directly. We've seen this before. France taxed wealth for 20 years. Result: 60,000 millionaires left. Approximately €200 billion in capital fled. The tax cost France roughly twice what it collected. It was killed it in 2018. Now the Netherlands wants to be the exception? This is a competitiveness crisis. This is the Netherlands telling founders, investors, and wealth creators: we don't understand how you work – but… we'll tax you anyway. The data is clear. The precedents are devastating. I don’t build a ecosystem in this country to watch the capital that funds innovation walk out the door.